


Before I Forget

by Whitaker C Sour (slowmobanana)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Adult Language, Amnesia, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Group Therapy, Mystery, alcohol use, suicide TW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowmobanana/pseuds/Whitaker%20C%20Sour
Summary: Michael Jones’s Memory Journal is a collection of journal entries regarding the mystery and recovery of Michael Jones, an amnesiac looking to uncover his dark history and untangle a web of lies that involves everyone he knows. Perhaps some truths are best left tied up and some people left in the past...
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	1. Michael Jones's Memory Journal

**Author's Note:**

> Before I Forget is already finished, so you don't have to worry about this never getting done. There are 10 total chapters, each will be released every day for the next 10 days. Originally, I wasn't going to post it at all because it's not my proudest work, but given the COVID-19 pandemic, I think everyone could use a little distraction --- and if I can help by posting shitty work, then so be it I do my part as a content creator!
> 
> I'm not gonna lie. I really got bored of editing this (which is kind of why it was never gonna be posted) so I'm just gonna post it and hope there are no loose ends or contradictions in the story, but if there are... idk, just ignore them. Try not to think about the story too much, I guess... Enjoy!

**Note From The Editor**

_Michael Jones’s Memory Journal_ is a hand-written notebook that has been transcribed into a computer typeface suitable for reading on a digital template. Some images have been replaced with _[square brackets]_ with appropriate descriptions written by the Editor. Due to the nature which the diary was found, some entries have been altered, edited or omitted at the discretion of the editor due to illegibility but everything that could be saved can be found in this release.

 _[the journal entry begins on the very first page. The memory journal is a black-bound book with golden inscribed words, Michael Jones’s Memory Journal.]_

* * *

**Entry 001: Hey, Asshole, Read This**

_June 28th, 20-something, I actually don’t know what year it is_

So, you just woke up and you don’t remember anything. 

If you’re panicking, stop that and read this. **You can trust everything this book says** , because it’s been written by you. You just don’t remember.

Your name is Michael Jones and you have both kinds of amnesia (whatever that means). You’re attending a group therapy class called AHGT and it was decided we would keep a journal of everything that happens so we can recover from memory lapses faster. (Not sure how this will help, but we’ll see.)

So, for this first entry, I’m going to write down three things you need to know every time you get a memory lapse;

  * Trust _ONLY_ this book and the people in it
  * **Do not let ANYONE read this book**
  * Whatever is wrong with you is not a normal thing to happen.



Also, you’re lactose-intolerant. Jack is insisting I don’t forget about that anymore. That doesn’t help me much now, I already ate a bunch of cheese-cubes at the snack table. I mean, I could have had the grapes, but fuck you. Cheese is better. I’ll eat cheese if I fucking want to.

Anyways, I’m supposed to write this like it’s the first time I’m reading this and I have no idea what’s going on. So, if you’re freaking out right now, calm the fuck down. Past Michael has got you.

I don’t know where you are, reading this, but I’m at the group therapy meeting right now. If you’re going to that, too, then let me give you a rundown on the people there.

There’s Jack, the group Councillor. He’s the one with the giant beard and he’ll probably give you a cookie when you first walk in. Take the cookie. It’s the best damn fucking cookie in the world. He’s pretty nice and has known you for a long time.

And then there’s Geoff, a volunteer. Recovering alcoholic, used to be a member but AHGT really helped him out so he came back to help others. He’s a great guy. He plays Halo. He’s great for a sounding board if you need one.

Jeremy’s the short guy who’s staring blankly at the corner. He’s pretty chill, pretty funny. I like him. He’s not anti-social, he just spaces out most of the time because he’s a really bad daydreamer or something.

The weird guy who’s sitting with his ankle crossed over his knee, chatting at Jeremy and fiddling with an electronic toy that he’s taken apart and rebuilt a thousand times, his name is Ryan (usually). He says creepy shit sometimes, but he’s a good guy. 

There’s also a few other guys, but don’t bother talking to them. They’re in a bad mood most of the time and honestly, I don’t care about them. They’re just guys like me, who need to figure out what the hell we’re all doing with our lives. Except everyone can remember everything and retain new information and I forget every single conversation I’ve ever had, a shitty status quo I go back to every once in a while.

The other thing you need to know is that you have a **friend and boss named Burnie Burns**. Well, his name is Michael, like you, but just call him Burnie.

Anyways, you don’t really live with him but you do spend a lot of time at his house. Remember; it’s not your home, you just spend a lot of time there, but if you find Burnie and he says everything is fine, trust him. He’s probably the **most trustworthy friend** you’ve got, other than Jack and Geoff. (This is also according to Jack and Geoff, so, we’re taking their word for it.)

If I’m honest, I only “woke up” a few days ago, so I’m not sure how much else I can tell you in that capacity but the more we write, the more we remember --- or that’s what Jack is saying.

Yes, this is going to get very frustrating and, yes, it’s advised we write in as much detail as possible. When it comes time for you to write in this journal (and you must), be sure to **write down every fucking detail you can remember**! It won’t be much, but it all counts.

I’m at a group therapy session as I’m writing this. We’re on lunch break right now, second recess, so I’m taking the time to fill the first few pages of my new notebook.

I’m going to ask Ryan what he thinks I should put in here. 

_Hello. :) This is Ryan. I started going to the therapy thing the same day you had a memory lapse and forgot everything. That’s how we started talking. You came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re new here, too?” even though it was definitely not your first day._

_You were there for your memory thing, I’m here for my personality thing, we drank coffee and bonded over memory lapses. Jack explained about how you’d been going for a while and I got to watch you learn about your life all over again._

_“They said I have memory problems, some kind of amnesia. I don’t really understand it yet.” If I had a dime for every time you said that, I’d be a rich, rich man._ _But you’re worth the effort_ _, so don’t get into your own head about it._

_Three things to know about me the next time you forget who I am:_

  * _Ryan is your friend._


  * _Ryan will always be here for you._


  * _I am not always Ryan._



It’s Michael again. Don’t worry about the ominous tone of his writing, he’s always this melodramatic. He was grinning like a fool while he was writing in my notebook. He just likes to fuck with people.

So now, I will get Jeremy to write in my book so you can know what to expect from Jeremy.

_Hi!!! I’m Jeremy!! If you’re reading this, you probably forgot who I am, so I am here to tell you who I am. First thing you should know is that you can always talk to me. Just come right up, say, “Hi! I forgot everything again. Can you help me?” And I will help you. That’s what we’re here for, right? To help each other and shit. We’ll eat donuts and drink beer and play video games and stuff._

_I’m at AHGT because I can’t focus on anything. It’s not a big deal, but my doctor said I should come by and at least talk about it with people. I guess I don’t really have to be here, I just am because I like coming here. Helps you feel less alone._

_The second thing you should know is that I like two sugar, two cream in my coffee._

_The third is to not worry about trying to remember everything. I know you want to remember things, but you should just stick to this book and everything ahead of right now._ _This is a new you, a new chance, a new beginning; take it._ _You have a whole future to write about! Also, be sure to_ _talk to Linsday_ _._

Michael here. Why the fuck did Jeremy write his fucking coffee order in here? Bitch, you’d be lucky if I even thought to bring you coffee after a memory lapse. Jerk-off. Anyways, Jeremy’s faded out, but you might not know what to look for when he does that. I asked him who Lindsay is and he goes, “Lindsay’s a friend. She works at McDonald’s with Ryan.”

Also, Ryan works at McDonald’s apparently, which is news to me right now because I didn’t know Ryan even worked. “Why does Ryan work at a McDonalds?”

Jeremy shrugs, “Well, it’s hard to find a job when you’re like us.”

So I ask, “Do _I_ have a job?”

“You’re an electrician.” Now, this is where he starts to fade out, so these are things to look out for; his gaze will fall to the side and he’ll be looking far away. He’ll usually get one more sentence in, which in this case is, “Uh, Burnie is your boss.” His speech slows, his eyebrows furrow together, he’s somewhere deep in thought. He sets his chin in his palm and mumbles something to himself.

“Jeremy, I’m losing you.”

And then, I lose Jeremy. He goes off into his own little world and there’s no getting Jeremy out of his fade outs once he’s gone-gone. **I asked if slapping him or dunking water on him would help, but that’s apparently super unadvisable so don’t do that.** I’ll bold it for good measure.

Anyways, I guess I’ll go get Jack to write in the book.

_If you wake up and can’t remember who or where you are, here are some things you should do:_

  * _Find a phone and dial [redacted*], ask for Jack, and tell me._


  * _Drink water if available, stay calm, and stay put._


  * _Locate a nearby trustworthy figure (officer, retail worker, etc) and explain to them what’s going on if you are not indoors._



Michael now, because Jack didn’t want to write too much in here for whatever reason. There’s just one more person I wanna get into the book before recess is over.

_stay in school, dont do drugs,_ _never give up hope_

_geoff wuz here_

Thanks, Geoff, for those three things to totally remember you by. He said something about getting to know him all over again. I really don’t care.

_[*the number had been redacted for personal protection]_

_[a long, single line divides his entries]_

* * *

**Entry 002: Day 1**

_June 28th, 9:23 PM_

Burnie’s asleep, the lights are dimmed, it’s almost time for bed. 

I’m supposed to recount the day, as much as I can, but I’m going to catch you up on everything that happened since I “last woke up” really briefly. It’s all kind of blurry, so it’s… not going to be much.

So I wake up on the 26th, I think. I’m not all that freaked out. I just kind of wake up and wander around the house aimlessly, exploring new surroundings and avoiding people as best as possible. I don't know where I am or who I am with or what I am supposed to do. I think it’s Burnie that I’m with and it takes him a few minutes to figure it out. He explains to me pretty much everything I told you.

I spend most of the day remembering how to do things, like use the coffee maker, surf the TV, restart (again, apparently) a video game that Burnie insists is my favourite. I honestly don’t know anything about the game itself, but I don’t have to think to play video games. I just… do. It’s muscle memory, I think. That’s a thing, right? My brain might forget, but my fingers don’t. On some level, I think I even remember the bosses weaknesses, even if I can’t recall them into words exactly.

There are other things I kind of know how to do. I can look at an electrical panel and fix whatever’s wrong. I _can’t_ , however, remember all the safety procedures but I at least know what I’m doing. Why I can play video games and fix an electrical panel but not make coffee is beyond me.

The next day, Burnie brings me back to my apartment, a small one-bedroom on the west side of Austin. (In case you forget, **my address is [redacted*]**.) It doesn’t look like much, does it? Kind of bland, kind of cold. The walls are bare, the furniture is second-hand, and it doesn’t feel a bit like home.

I do, however, have a giant-ass bar full of half-empty liquor bottles and a gaming system worth just as much, so at least I have taste.

After he leaves, I see a friend of mine named **Gavin**.

He knocks on my apartment door, breaking the weird silence that comes when you’re left alone in a strange place, like someone else’s house. I answer the door and there’s this lanky dude standing there, grinning bright as day. “Michael boi!”

“Who the fuck are you?”

He deflates. “Michael, it’s _me_! It’s Gavin!”

“What? Are we friends or something?” He looks like he might do... something, like cry or get angry. Instead, he just stares at me as if he’s the one with the memory issues. So, to stop him from getting too into his head, I add, “Listen, a lot’s been going on and things are kind of weird right now.”

That doesn’t help. He scratches at his elbow, lips pinched together. I feel like I’m trying to explain to a fucking child why we aren’t going to the park. “Well, do you wanna talk about it?”

And, of course, I say, “Fuck it. Sure.” and let a total stranger into my house.

But he isn’t a total stranger.

He walks in and sets himself down on the couch and rests his elbows on his knees and folds his hands together. I pour us both whiskey and he lights up when I set his cup in front of him. I sit next to him on the sofa. “So, what’s… up?” he asks awkwardly because everything is very awkward and also not.

“I have amnesia,” I say. “Both kinds. Whatever that means.”

“Oh.”

“I guess I forgot we were friends.”

“How long ago?”

“Yesterday. It was just yesterday.”

“Oh, wow.”

That’s basically how our conversation goes. Then he stays and we take turns playing one-player games and I get to know Gavin all over again. (Hint: He’s a prick.) I understand this happens a lot, that I forgot things all the time, but Gavin doesn’t. This is as much news to him as for me. I explain to him that it’ll probably happen again. He says he’ll stay anyway.

So, **I guess we’re best friends**. I don’t have to struggle through conversation, I don’t have to worry about forgetting.everything. It was nice that, for the first time in my known life, I actually don’t have to live as someone who forgot but as someone who just got to be.

Cheesy stuff, I know.

Anyways, the day after that is actually today. Burnie takes me into therapy and explains to everyone I forgot again, and then I get reintroduced to everyone again. Everyone except Jeremy and Ryan doesn’t bother getting to know me. I guess when you hit a reset button too many times, no one wants to bother getting to know a ticking time bomb.

No one has the patience for Jeremy’s fade outs and no one is brave enough to risk talking to Not Ryan, and no one wants to have to have repeat conversations all over again with me, so the three of us just form a band of Unwanted People that hang out in the corner and avoid talking to anyone. Even if Ryan and Jeremy never say anything explicit as that, they herd me into their corner and sit me down and Jeremy fades out and Ryan fiddles with his toys and the three of us say nothing and that’s when I realised we are the misfits.

I wonder how often people change out. I wonder if there’s someone new who hasn’t been there before or if I forgot someone who wouldn’t be coming back. I’m asking a lot of questions I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer to --- not because I won’t ask, but because if I did and got my answer, I wouldn’t remember it for very long.

From what I understand, the longest I remember anything **is about a week**. A week where I keep my memory (sort of), make friends, have an emotional breakthrough, and then… poof. Gone. Everything.

I wonder how many more times I will do this. I wonder how many times I have been through this. I wonder if everyone will stay.

I forgot how to use the coffee maker (again), so I’m going to have Burnie step me through it again in the morning, and I’m going to write it down so I know what I’m doing.

  1. Fill pot with 5 cups of water
  2. Pour water into reservoir in back
  3. Put in coffee filter
  4. Put in 5 spoonfuls of coffee into coffee filter
  5. Put pot back into thing
  6. Turn on coffee maker



Oh, also, the next time I see Gavin, I need him to write in my book.

_[*address has been omitted by the editor]_

_[a long black line separates the entries]_


	2. A Collection of Recollections

**Untitled Entry**

Eggs Laundry Soap

Milk Dish Soap

Bread Cat Litter

Soy Sauce Cat Food

Bacon

_[a long black line separates the entries]_

* * *

**Entry 003: Shopping Trip  
** _June 29th, 4-ish PM_

I don’t know why I stay at Burnie’s house. It seems like I do a lot of going back and forth between an apartment I guess I pay rent for(?) and Burnie’s house. I ask Burnie about that and he says that things have been like this for a while. He sends me back to my place when he has work in the morning and then has me back over on his off-days so he can watch me.

Which is weird. Do I really need to be watched? Why only sometimes? Why is it Burnie?

And who’s fucking cat is this?

I come home from shopping and find a cat in my apartment. I have no idea how it got in here or where it came from, but it’s in my house and on my counters and getting it’s dirty little fucking paws on _everything_! I want it out of my house!

But it’s sleeping on top of my fridge right now, so, I guess I’ll deal with it later.

Anyways, the thing that happened today that I guess is worth writing down is that I went grocery shopping on my own and, honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. There’s a couple things I have to keep in mind when I go out on my own for the day:

  1. Make sure you know how to get to where you’re going
  2. Remember how to take a bus
  3. Remember how to call a cab
  4. Did you know the bus can take cash?
  5. Write down the name of the place you’re going so you don’t forget
  6. Yes, I did get lost and also forgot the name of the place I was going to



I also forget why I’m going. But then I see my notebook and I read it and I see a grocery list and then I remember what I’m doing! The damn book does work! So, I ask someone how to get to the nearest grocery store, don’t write down the directions, get lost again, then happen upon some kind of market and that’s good enough for me. I got everything on the list (except eggs, which they had but I didn’t buy for some reason… or maybe they didn’t have eggs) and then I thankfully wrote down my address and only find my way home because a stranger taught me how to use the GPS in my phone. (Did you know **phones have GPS’s**? Bold that so I remember it later.)

Burnie’s here, anyway, so I’m going to get him to write in my book and NOT READ IT, BURNIE, okay, thanks, just give me a minute.

_Hurry up and get better so I can stop taking care of your stupid ass. I’m Burnie and I’m your boss and also your caretaker. How did that happen? Well, I don’t_ **_own a huge company*_ ** _and it’s important to me all the people who work for me are being taken care of. I know I’m your boss and your caretaker, but I’m also your friend. Remember this;_ _I am always on your side._

It’s not three things about Burnie to know, but it’s something. Wonder if he understands the irony of telling me to remember that.

I’m going over to his house tonight because I have a bunch of questions about my stupid amnesia thing I want answered and he’s probably my best bet. If he’s been taking care of me for all this time, then he must know what’s wrong.

_[*the sentence was bolded after it was written]_

_[a long black line separates the entries]_

* * *

**Entry 004: Both Kinds of Amnesia  
** _June 29th, 9-ish PM_

Burnie says **I lost my memory in some kind of accident**. He doesn’t get too into detail, but it must have been on the job because he looks kind of guilty, pinching his lips, avoiding my eyes, and fiddling with his fingers.

He explains there was some permanent damage to the good ol’ memory banks. There’s a bunch of different memory things, the hippocampus and amygdala (I had to Google those names), and some other stuff. I damaged two things, the hippocampus and the cerebellum (Googled that, too). And maybe my amygdala, because I apparently don’t freak out about not having any memories and never have, so that’s fun.

So, I mentioned I had “both kinds of amnesia”, which is retrograde and anterograde amnesia. One makes me forget everything before a certain date. The other makes me forget the new things I learn almost immediately. It’s awesome and I love it.

What makes my situation weird is that I usually make some good progress on the second amnesia: relearning names, organising information, winning memory games, shit like that. Something about strengthening the connections of neurotransmitters. (Sounds like a sci-fi novel.)

Then, every once in a while, it just all blinks away. Every name I learned, every face I met, every game I won, forgotten. I could lead a totally normal life with both kinds of amnesia, I could go on and work with what I got. It’s the reset button that fucks me.

They don’t know why it happens. They’ve done brain scans, ultrasounds, the whole show, and nothing has come up abnormal. At least, nothing abnormal for me, apparently. No visible brain damage, no weird growths.

In other words, we’re a medical mystery, buddy! We’re gonna get a whole syndrome named after us, probably. Bet the guys at therapy can’t top that.

Anyways, he’s going to run me through some memory exercises tonight. Tomorrow, group therapy.

_[a squiggled line divides the entries]_

* * *

**Entry 005: Therapy  
** _June 30th, 3-ish PM_

I’m not sure why I have to go, since I forget all the faces and names anyway, but I guess socializing helps something somewhere along the path to recovery. Maybe because I have friends there who care about me. Maybe I help them somehow, because they sure as shit aren’t doing much for me.

No offense, Jeremy and Ryan, but apparently, a week from now, it’s not going to matter we played Big Jenga. Not to me, anyway. But it must matter to them. Jeremy especially, who starts talking excitedly about his writing career, how his “fade outs” help him work on story ideas, and whenever he fades back in, he writes it all down and makes a story.

“Guess who the fuck just finished his first draft!” he cheers when it’s his turn to talk in the morning circle.

“Good job, Jeremy!” says Jack. “Is this the same one from last year?”

“The one and only.” He puffs out his chest, radiating pride like it’s something that comes in buckets. Kind of wish I had a bucket to scoop up all that self-confidence in to have for myself. “I have no idea what it’s going to be called yet, but I’m starting the editing process. It takes time but it’s fun.”

I nudge Jeremy’s shoulder with my fist. “Nice work.”

“Thanks.”

“Ryan?” Jack moved on to Ryan, who sits on the other side of Jeremy. He leans back, smug, with arms crossing his chest. “Did you have anything exciting you want to talk about?”

Ryan shakes his head. “Can’t say I do,” he says.

“Anything exciting your _other personalities_ do?” Jeremy tries and Ryan shoots him a playful smirk.

“That’s for them to know and for me to find out the worst way possible.”

That gets a rise out of Jeremy and me, laughing equally amused and terrified. “Shit, dude!”

“Geez, Ryan,” Geoff chuckles, shaking his head.

None of the other guys laugh because they’re dead inside. Except for the two guys who look alike but definitely aren’t twins; they’re chuckling but won’t admit it, because they’re not as dead inside as the others.

“Alright, Matt---”

I jump. “Hold on! I didn’t get to go!”

“Yes, you did,” Jeremy says. “You told us about the cat in your apartment and you named her Lindsay for some reason.”

I feel ice cold. I don’t remember that. Then again, I guess that happens. “I did what?”

“You bought her cat food and a little condo and you’re so excited.”

“I am?” That doesn’t sound like me. I don’t hate cats, but they walk on countertops where I make food and the litter box smells like hell and it makes the whole house smell and why did I say I was going to keep Lindsay!? And why the fuck did I fucking name a cat after a fucking person I haven’t fucking met yet? “The fuck is wrong with me?”

“It’s not DID,” Ryan feels necessary to clarify. “You were still most definitely Michael when you said that.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” I snap. “My problem’s amnesia, that’s probably why I fucking _forgot_ . The diagnosis is in, _asshole_ . It’s _my_ job to forget shit, not you.”

Jeremy interrupts us both by leaning in between us and addressing the guy on the other side of Ryan. “Hey, Matt, what did you do?”

The answer was playing video games or some shit, I was too busy trading stupid faces with Ryan to pay attention.

We go around the circle again and talk about how we have to explain how we managed to do the exciting thing without our problems getting in the way. I had my book, Jeremy made use of his time both inside and outside his fade outs, and Ryan did… nothing

I’m not really sure what the procedure for DID is. Ryan doesn’t remember things like I don’t, but I don’t have the added worry of doing or saying shit that I didn’t meanwhile also meaning it. Our memory lapses are similar but not the same. At least I’m always one person, even if I can’t remember it happening.

Ryan, on the other hand... I wonder what he thinks he does as Not Ryan. The rest of us haven’t the slightest clue.

An hour later, during first recess, Jeremy is more aware than usual --- and more excited, too. “Guys, guys! I have a great idea,” he says, patting his hands on his thighs. “We should go out to the lakeside and **watch the fireworks this weekend!** ”

“Fireworks?” Ryan echoes and he cocks an eyebrow.

“Yeah! It’s the **Fourth of July**.”

I can’t remember what fireworks are. Fireworks sound familiar and I get the image of war and colour in my head, but it’s hard to make sense of what they are exactly. I don’t ask. “Sure,” I say.

“Alright!” Jeremy nudges Ryan’s arm with his elbow, grinning. “Ryan, c’mon, you know you wanna, buddy.”

Ryan folds his arms and holds his tongue, just to keep the suspense. Jeremy keeps leaning forward, waiting. And then Ryan goes, “Yeah, okay, let’s do it.”

Jeremy pumps both fists in the air. “Yes! Fireworks with the guys! I’ll bring the beer.”

“Fuck that, **I’ll bring whiskey** ,” I promise.

We turn to Ryan and he shrugs. “I’ll buy us McDonalds,” he adds and Jeremy’s excitement is infectious so we fist bump and chatter about how excited we are for the Fourth of July.

  1. **We’re actually going on the third** because we have therapy on the fifth
  2. We will go on Saturday after therapy.
  3. Ryan will drive us there
  4. We will all go to the lakeside together.
  5. We will watch the fireworks and drink
  6. Ryan will drive us home. (Ryan doesn’t drink)
  7. Buy whiskey
  8. Buy whiskey
  9. Buy whiskey
  10. Buy whiskey
  11. Buy whiskey



_[a long line divides the entries]_


	3. Familiar Faces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the missed day! Haven't had much of a chance to post since I got sucked into... Carmen Sandiego...

**Untitled Entry**

  1. Go out front door
  2. Go left
  3. Go until Keal St.
  4. Make right
  5. Go downtown
  6. Keep going all the way to Shepherd Rd.
  7. Make left
  8. Liquor store is on right
  9. Cambridge is too far
  10. Buy Southern Comfort Whiskey, Large Bottle
  11. Pay cashier
  12. Leave store
  13. Go left until Keal St
  14. Make left on Keal
  15. Apartment will be on the right.



_[a long line divides the entries]_

* * *

**Entry 006: Buy Whiskey  
** _July 1st, 7 PM -ish_

Buying whiskey ended up being a bigger ordeal than I wanted and I still don’t understand what happened.

Gavin came over to my apartment, unexpected, as I was getting ready to head out. Knock, knock, knock! I open the door and Gavin’s beaming in the doorway. “Michael boi!” he chirps. It takes me a few minutes to place the face to the name and he looks so heartbroken when I don’t immediately recognise him. “You didn’t forget again, did you?”

“No,” I say, letting him into my house because how could I forget Gavin? He’s a prick. (Yes, I did flip back through the book to jog my memory. How could I forget Gavin?) “I’m headed to the liquor store. You wanna come?”

Gavin is halfway getting off his shoes then stops and starts sliding them on again. “Sure, I could use some bevs,” he says.

I show him my directions, I tell him, “Don’t tell me where we’re going. I’m going to use the book to help us get there. I want to see if I did this right.”

“An adventure!” Gavin says, and I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic. “I think those directions look right.”

“Me, too.”

So we set out for the liquor store.

We found Keal and we found Shepherd, but no liquor. We’re standing at Shepherd and Cambridge like two idiots. Gavin is staring at me expectedly and I’m fuming at the corner, looking up and down the rows of shops and finding nothing. “What’re we doing?”

“Looking for the liquor store. You were using the book.”

“I _am_ using the book, but my directions aren’t… accurate.” I flip through the rest of the book, hoping to find something that will help me… and I do. **Phones have GPS’s**. “I got it,” I say, typing ‘liquor store’ into Google. He’s giving me a look, so I add, “I’m still using the book. This still counts.”

Gavin laughs like a seagull choking on dogshit and follows me back up Shepherd until we turn down another street and find the damn building hidden on Locke Rd.

No, the fun doesn’t stop there.

We walk into the liquor store. I grab a cart. Gavin grabs some beers and a bottle of vodka, and then he shows me where the whiskey is because I don’t know where I’m going. He’s clumsy and air-headed and we go back and forth between normal conversation and me screaming at him to be careful with the expensive glass bottles. He just laughs and then I laugh and everyone is staring at us but I couldn’t give a fuck because I’m happy. Actually, actually happy.

And then I forget.

I forget where I am, I forget who I was with, I forget what I’m doing. I’m standing stupidly in the middle of the aisle with a bottle of whiskey in my hand, taking in my surroundings, and trying to make sense of the world. No one stands in the isle with me.

Eventually, a passing clerk notices my confusion and approaches me; “Sir, can I help you find anything?”

“No,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m just…” There’s a book in my cart, black-bound and golden label; _Michael Jones’s Memory Diary_. I read the book. I don’t remember-remember but at least I have a vague sense of what’s going on. I look up at the clerk and smile. “Sorry. I’m fine. Thanks.”

Gavin finally shows up again with another bottle of liquor and slips it into the cart. “Michael boi!” he sings. “Ready to check out?”

“Yeah,” I say and I don’t say much after that because, at the moment, I don’t know who Gavin is but I decide to trust him because what other choice did I have?

We get up to the counter, we set the bottles on the counter, and Gavin pats his pockets and goes, “Uh. Michael. I forgot my wallet.”

I stand at the cashier and sigh and fish out my wallet and I pull out my card and how much money do I have in my bank account? The total comes to about a hundred and a bit. “Big party tonight?” asks the cashier, smirking at the selection.

“Fourth of July,” I respond and he nods.

“Exciting.”

I look up to the cashier, flick my eyes to Gavin, then look up above the cashier to clear my head---

I see myself on the wall, a face plastered next to many; **Do Not Serve**.

I tap the credit card against the machine. Ding! Approved.

“Would you like a bag?”

“Yes, please.”

I waste no time gathering my stuff and hurrying for the exit, Gavin close behind me. I’m carrying everything but I don’t want to stop carrying things because I’m too nervous. My heart is slamming against my chest. I can’t breathe. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know why they won’t serve me at the liquor store, I don’t know how to find my way back home. Where am I? Why do I have all this liquor?

“Michael?”

I stop. I’m staring down a long, wet alleyway. I’m standing in a puddle. I curse and step out of it, leaning against the wall and accepting defeat. Gavin leans against the wall next to me. I hold the liquor against my chest because I’ll be damned if I get the damn paper bag wet and have it break apart before I get home.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Are you?”

I sigh, shake my head, shrug. “It’s just frustrating,” I admit. “They’re not supposed to serve me. My face was up on the wall. I wonder...” I try to imagine any scenario that would result in me being banned from a liquor store and the only thing I can summon is the image of being drunk and trying to buy more booze and maybe losing my temper when they deny me service. That must be it. “I can’t remember everything I’ve done but that doesn’t mean I didn’t do it. I guess there are bad things I did, too, and there are consequences I’m not aware of. I hope there aren’t many like that.”

“You should write it in your book,” Gavin suggests. “so you’ll remember for next time.”

“I wish I knew what I did.”

Gavin kicks off the wall. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. He turns around, hands on hips. “No need to know. Next time, we’ll just go to a different liquor store.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I say sarcastically but maybe Gavin doesn’t get that.

“Of course, boi, what’re friends for?” He nudges me on the shoulder with his fist. “Just wish I was there to get kicked out of the liquor store with you!”

I laugh because that’s stupid. What fun would there be in getting kicked out of a liquor store?

But if I had to pick anyone to get kicked out of a liquor store with, it would be Gavin.

_[a black line separates the entries]_

* * *

**Entry 007: Facebook  
** _July 2nd, 2PM_

I forgot social media was a thing.

Burnie said I don’t have any social media because there was no point in me having that sort of thing, which I think is stupid because it could document everything I need to know, rather than having to write it all down in some stupid book.

So I decided to make a Facebook.

Of course, I immediately ran into the problem that passwords are a thing and I’m going to have a hell of a time having passwords if I have to write them down all the time. I can’t put them in my book. Or I shouldn’t, I don’t think.

My phone doesn’t have a lock on it, which I’m willing to bet was something that happened a couple “resets” ago because I’d likely constantly forget how to access my own stupid phone.

Speaking of my phone, all my messages only go back as far as February and they’re all conversations between me and Burnie and Jack. My contacts list only lists two people, Burnie and Jack. Suppose someone with no memory wouldn’t have a need to add more names to that list. But no Jeremy, no Ryan. Why did I never get their numbers before? Maybe I never thought to ask.

These therapy people sure make weird choices, but there must be a reason. An amnesia reason, a safety thing.

How many questions have I asked before? How many conversations have I repeated?

I just go with the flow. I go where people tell me to go, do what people tell me to do, because it doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter to me at all, does it? It shouldn’t. It can’t. It shouldn’t mean anything now because it won’t mean anything later.

I wonder if there’s anyone I’ve told that to before. I wonder if I’ve had the same thoughts before, too.

Anyways, I set up a Facebook.

Email: _[redacted*]_

Password: mboi123

When it comes to adding pictures, I only have a handful on my phone. I take a new photo, something recent, and I find myself staring at the man in the photo. My own face is alien to me. I have lines on my cheeks, scruff under my chin, a weird scar along my eyebrow.

**How old am I?** When was I born? I don’t have a driver’s license or any other ID to tell me my birthday and Burnie’s nowhere around to ask and I’ll probably forget to do so when I see him next. At some point, I’ll figure it out.

I only have one friend so far, which is Burnie. Go figure. I realise I don’t know anyone’s last name, so I can’t look them up. I scroll through Burnie’s Facebook, because maybe something or someone will jog a memory.

There’s no name I know. There’s nothing I recognise. I scroll through Burnie’s wall to see if there are any old posts about me. Maybe something before the accident.

I don’t find anything and I only give up when Lindsay jumps onto my desk and walks across the keyboard. I give her some food, curse her for sleeping on top of the fridge instead of in her cat condo, and then…

And then there is nothing to do.

I sit in my living room. I grab a bottle of liquor. I drink and play video games because there’s nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do. It’s lonely, I decide, and I think I’d rather be anywhere but here.

But here I am. I guess I’m going to drink and play video games all day.

Lindsay’s fallen asleep on my lap anyway.

_[a black line separates the entries]_


	4. The Third of July

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than I thought, oops--

**Entry 008: The Third of July  
** _ July 3rd, 4-ish PM _

Ryan’s driving to the lakeside and Jeremy’s faded out for the moment, so I’m taking the time to catch up on everything. Therapy went the same as normal, which is talking about how obstacles in our life and how we work around them and then play dumb games and hang out.

Though, Ryan seems a little off today and I’m kind of worried that Not Ryan is going with us to the firework show. He’s talking more eloquently, using big words I don’t know how to spell, so I have no idea how I’m supposed to record our conversations here. Or, at least, the important things.

Not Ryan is creepy. He still responds to Ryan but he doesn’t  _ act _ like Ryan. He seems more… focused. Sharp. Aware. He’s sneaking side glances at me, his eyes flicker a lot to the rearview mirror. Is he looking at Jeremy or the car behind us?

If Ryan isn’t driving the car, who is?

I don’t want to be left alone with Not Ryan, so I’m going to write in my book until Jeremy comes back from wherever he went.

It’s been a particularly bad day for Jeremy, which sucks because he was the most excited to go. He fades out for a lot of therapy, so we ask Matt if he wants to play Mario Kart with us in Jeremy’s stead. We just sit Jeremy down on the couch beside me, hand Matt the controller, and we play.

Matt turns out to be a decent guy. He doesn’t talk, which makes me realise Matt isn’t a dick who doesn’t laugh or talk ---  **Matt’s a guy who just can’t fucking talk** . Makes me feel like a dick. He’s probably told me a hundred times before (er, well, tried to tell me, or whatever) and then, well, there’s only so many times you can explain yourself to someone, especially when it won’t eventually matter.

I decide Matt’s okay and I’m glad to have this book because maybe we can be friends, despite my amnesia.

We’re stopping at McDonalds now. We have to go inside because I can’t remember what’s on the menu. Jeremy still hasn’t woken up. Wonder how we’re gonna navigate this one.

_ [a long black line is used to demonstrate a passing of time; the entries continues] _

Fuck,  **I love McDonalds** . They have ribs! Well, McRibs, which is definitely no good for you and tastes like a heart attack between two crappy buns, but they’re so damn good! I should’ve bought ten. I am so excited to have McRibs for the first time a bunch more times. That has got to be the only good thing about repeated memory loss.

It’s funny, because the second we get in the car, Jeremy smells the food and wakes right up. Guess nothing can stop an empty stomach.

“Wow, Ryan, good move on the McDonalds thing,” I say with a mouthful of rib sandwich.

Ryan chuckles and it sounds normal. “Thanks,” he says.

Jeremy is fiddling with his phone, trying to find the right song to play on the car speakers.

The drive out to the lakeside is longer than I expect and the sun is already starting to go down. Jeremy insists we’ll make it there in time and Ryan agrees so I trust them. The music is loud, the food is good, and we’re laughing all the way there.

It’s amazing. I wish Gavin were here, he would love this.

Now that I think about it, though, Gavin’s not in my contact list, but he should. I’ll get his number when I see him and I can invite him to come out with Jeremy, Ryan, and me next time.

_ [instead of dividing the entries with a line, the next entry starts on a fresh page. The writing is very difficult to read due to lack of coordination] _

* * *

**Entry 009: Reset  
** _ July 4th, 2PM _

I forgot again.

Everything hurts and I forgot again.

_ [the next entry starts on a fresh page] _

* * *

**Entry 010: The Third of July, Part Two  
** _ July 5th, 12 PM _

Jeremy here. You asked me to write down what happened at the lakeside, so here’s the story.

We got to the lakeside at about half-past seven. We still had a bunch of McDonald's left over (Ryan bought us a fuckton of food) and so we decided to lay out a blanket and make the world’s best worst picnic. (McDonald's, beers, and Southern Comfort.)

The fireworks were amazing. It was a good show. We each downed half the whiskey bottle and sang God Save the Queen because you couldn’t remember the words to Stars and Stripes Forever. But you knew God Save the Queen, and we must have argued for an hour about that. (Did you know you’re fucking hilarious when you’re mad and drunk? I didn’t even know that was possible.)

Anyways, this somehow turned into wrestling. Ryan says no one won because we both ended up losing our shit because you had cheese on one of your burgers and that made you fart real loud  _ a lot _ and I’m pretty sure I have never laughed so hard in my entire Goddamn life.

It was phenomenal, Michael. It was a blast.

_ [a black line divides the entries] _


	5. Reset

**Entry 011: Hello Again  
** _ July 5th, 7 PM _

Yesterday morning, I woke up in the hospital with three broken knuckles on my right hand and cuts and bruises all over like I’d been pushed down a hill. Which could be very well what happened. No one knows.

I spent most of yesterday in the hospital because I woke up with amnesia. Got brain scans and tests and all that shit and nothing came of it. I thought maybe I had gotten amnesia from the fall but I read this journal and that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Two different kinds of amnesia, huh? That blows.

Anyways, I didn’t really follow any of the instructions of the book, other than don’t show anyone, because they don’t seem to apply. I didn’t bother calling Jack because Burnie already did that for me.

I go to group therapy today because that’s apparently what you do after being in the hospital, I guess.

Ryan and Jeremy are there, though I accidentally approach the wrong short guy and that draws a laugh out of a few people who I guess are used to laughing at me. When I do find Ryan and Jeremy, they’re sitting with another guy. I don’t know who he is at first, but he never says nothing so I guess he’s Matt.

“Wow, dude, you look like hell.”

Jeremy and Ryan look fine and that’s a piss off. “What happened?” I ask. I don’t sit down because I’m afraid of them. I was supposed to be with them on the third of July, but I ended up at the hospital. Ryan’s nose looks a bit crooked. Maybe I punched him. (And broke my hand?)

“You got too drunk,” Jeremy admits, swallowing and looking at his hands. “And you fell into the lake.”

Ryan folds his arms, furrowing his eyebrows, and he looks almost guilty. Immediately, I don’t trust him. He adds. “Well, down a very steep hill and then into the lake.”

“I broke my hand falling down a hill?”

“Dude, we were so hammered,” Jeremy chuckles. “The trip was awesome! Don’t get me wrong, it was awesome as hell. You just… got too drunk and fell into the river.”

Slowly, I lower myself into their spare seat. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says. “I was sober. I was supposed to look after you.”

I wave my hand at him and scoff. “No, fuck that. I can take care of my own damn self, drunk or not.”

“But you have amnesia,” Jeremy says like I don’t know that. “You didn’t get to write any of it down in your book before you forgot.”

There was an entry in here that said something like, even if I forget, others will remember or something. So, I open the book and give him the pen. “Write it down,” I tell him. “I may not remember it, but you do.”

That way, I have a good memory I can revisit. At least I’ll have something.

It’s fucking funny. It’s really fucking funny.

After therapy, I go home and Lindsay’s meowing her head off and purring and rubbing against me.

I guess she’s just happy to see me. She hasn’t left my side since I got home.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 012: Update Contact  
** _ July 6th, 4 PM _

Gavin comes by and seeing him again was better than I expected. I open the door and he’s standing there, giddy and grinning. “Michael boi!” he chirps. “Ready for bevs and games?” I must have agreed to do this at some point. Made plans. He’s just a stranger in my doorway, but he also isn’t a stranger.

“Fuck yeah,” I say because I can’t bring myself to tell him I’ve forgotten again, but it doesn’t get to last long because he looks me up and down and furrows his eyebrows, especially narrowing his eyes at my broken hand.

“What happened to you?”

I give him the rundown over pasta and beer. It’s funny how hanging out with Gavin doesn’t require me to remember anything from the past I’m unaware of. He helps me when I forget what I’m doing when I go into the kitchen, or reminds me where I usually keep spare electrical cords, or points me in the right direction when I get lost in video games.

He loves Lindsay. He squeals when he sees her and devolves into a high-pitched baby voice and coos and pets and  _ loves _ her and she loves him right back. Lindsay never leaves us, squeezing right between us as we play games.

“Did you take care of Lindsay when I was in the hospital?”

“Nah,” Gavin said. “But I wouldn’t mind taking care of itty bitty Lindsay.” He rolls a coo and scratches behind her ears. “Text me if you need me to.”

I produce my phone from my left pocket, handing it to him. “I don’t have your number, dumbass. You gotta put it in.” He takes the phone, then immediately drops it onto the hardwood. He squeaks, I snap, “Gavin!” and snatch the phone back up. “Alright. Fuck you. Just tell me the number.”

I insert him as a contact. Finally,  **I have Gavin’s number** . It only took three or four tries, I think.

We go back to drinking and video games.

“It’s a good thing someone was there to drag you out,” he says.

Yeah. He’s right.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Untitled Entry**

Meeting Gavin at my apartment on July 10th, 4PM.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _


	6. Unknown Sender

**Entry 013: Little Mysteries  
** _ July 7th, 8PM _

I’m staying at Burnie’s house because my right hand is broken and, combined with my amnesia, I’m having trouble doing things. I can make coffee with the help of the book, but everything must be done with the left hand and I’m not very good with it. Gavin was over yesterday and he sort of helped me do things all day by offering ideas, but today there is no one, so Burnie told me to come over.

I’m watching TV in his living room when my phone dings, which is a strangely alien sound and I realise I don’t text much.

It’s a text message from an unknown number; ‘ _ i know what happened on the third of july _ ’

My heart slams against my chest, my entire body goes prickly and cold. We have a chat history I wasn’t aware of. I had written before that I had no contacts, no previous messages, nothing that explained who I was.

But I scroll up. They’ve texted me before. I have never responded. All little mysteries, all little conversations I never had.

‘ _ Ryan hurt you. _ ’

‘ _ Burnie lied to you. _ ’

‘ _ Everyone knows. _ ’

And the very first text message, dating back to October of last year: ‘ _ I know what you did. _ ’

I’m sitting in Burnie’s living room. He’s in his office, on the phone, managing work stuff, helping his little business grow. One of his employees is going through a bad divorce, so he’s taking on some extra work while it gets figured out.

I’m sitting in Burnie’s living room and I am only filled with an overwhelming urge to just forget. I don’t want to know. Life is already so complicated without all the little mysteries. What good would it do to know everything when I’d just forget it all anyway?

I’m sitting in Burnie’s living room and I text the number back; ‘ _ who are you? _ ’

There is a long time before I get a response, almost long enough to forget why I am so anxious to start with.

‘ _ Have you talked to lindsay yet? _ ’

‘ _ Jeremy? _ ’

‘ _ No _ ’

‘ _ Who are you? _ ’

They never text me back so I’m left in the dark, watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta and reading back to when Lindsay is mentioned because I’ve heard that name before and I don’t think they mean my cat.

Lindsay, the girl who works at McDonald's with Ryan.

Oh, good! I can try those McRibs I apparently like.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 014: Detective Work  
** _ July 8th, 10PM _

McRibs are the fucking best.

At group therapy, I ask Ryan if he can take me to his workplace so I can see Lindsay, since I don’t know which McDonald's they work at. (For reference, it’s  **on Shepherd, the first one after Locke** .)

But Ryan acts kind of weird. His hands are folded at his waist and he stands like a soldier at ease. He looks me up and down as if he’s never seen me before, picking out a thousand little things about me, and tilts his head to one side. “I’m sorry?”

“To McDonald's. The place you work, Ryan.”

“Sorry, Ryan’s not available right now.” He smiles, pleasant. I want to run away and come back when he’s Ryan, but he’s never ditched me when I have my relapses --- at least, that’s what the book implies --- and so I don’t run.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “Then, who am I talking to?”

“The name’s Roger Davis.” He sticks out a hand. “Detective Roger Davis.”

“Detective!” I exclaim louder than I actually need to. What’s the proper procedure for meeting someone’s other personality? I take his hand and shake it uncertainly. “Uh, nice to meet you…” I bow my head a bit. “Detective Davis?”

“Roger is fine,” says Ryan. Roger? Oh, God, this is going to get confusing. “I apologise I’m not the right, er, person you were hoping to speak to but I can try to help. What was your question?”

“I want to talk to Lindsay,” I say and just hope Roger knows what I’m talking about. “She works with Ryan at a McDonalds. I just need to know which McDonald's it is.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

I furrow my eyebrows together. “‘Cause Jeremy said I should talk to her and I haven’t yet. It’s in my book.”

From behind Roger, Jeremy peaks out and frowns. “You haven’t done that yet?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I can do that for you,” Roger says. “I’ll do you one better, I’ll take you there after therapy so you don’t get lost.”

I know he’s Ryan, but Roger is still a stranger. Ah, fuck, everybody’s a stranger, but Roger isn’t a name from this book and I’m not sure how I feel about being stuck in a car with him. “Sure,” I say anyway, because I’m a dumbass.

Later, Jack comes up to our misfit group during second recess. “Michael, can we talk?”

He takes me to his office and shuts the door. I have never seen his office before, maybe. It’s got all sorts of happy pictures of him and his wife, a desk, a thousand papers, framed documentations of great achievements. The words  _ prison asylum _ sticks out.

He sits at his desk and I sit across from him. “What’s up, Geoff?”

“Jack,” he corrects, though with the same patience a kindergarten teacher would to her favourite student. “I was hoping we could have some one-on-one time, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

“How have you been fairing this time around?”

This time around. This reset. This lifetime. “Fine,” I say.

Jack folds his hands on his desk and leans forward, speaking quietly as if loud noises scare me. “I was wondering if I could read your journal.”

I’m holding the journal in my hands and my grip tightens. “I’m not supposed to show anyone,” I say. “I seem pretty dedicated to keeping my book a secret.”

Jack tilts his head. “Why’s that?”

I shrug. “I mean, I don’t really know anyone. Not actually, anyway.”

“You don’t trust me?” He sounds hurt. He sounds like I told him a family member died. The guilt pains but I shake my head, so slow and small I’m not sure he sees it. But he does. “It must be hard,” he continues. “To lead a life without someone to trust.”

I pull a face at him. “Sorry, man, I got people I trust, you’re just not one of them.”

Jack smiles. It’s a nice smile, but it’s still weird. “I’m glad to hear that, Michael. Do you think you’d ever let those people read your book?” he asks.

That question catches me by surprise, so much so I physically recoil. I grip the book a little tighter. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I think the people I trust changes every time. I don’t think I should show anyone.” A beat, a consideration. Maybe I’d show Gavin, but I don’t say that out loud because I haven’t really decided yet. “There’s a lot of private stuff in here, you know. It’s basically a fucking diary.”

“Well,” Jack says slowly. “Is there anything you’ve written in the book that you’d like to discuss?”

I have to look through the book because I can’t remember what’s written in it. My face on the liquor store wall, July the third, the mysterious texts. I shut the book. “Why did you bring me in here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I haven’t seen you bring anyone else into your office,” I say. “There’s nothing in the book about personal talk therapy. So, why did you bring me in here?”

Jack sighs. Long, deep, contemplative. The truth is on his tongue. “I’m worried about you,” he says. “I’ve been worried since the accident.”

“The one where I fell into a lake?” I ask. “Yeah. Thought so.”

Jack nods slowly. “I want to know what you make of it.”

“I got drunk and fell down a hill,” I summarize sharply. “There’s not much to make of it.”

“Is that what you think happened?”

What I want to say is, _Listen, Jack, let’s be real. I live in a world with no yesterday and barely a tomorrow. Truth is, I don’t really care what happened and I don’t care about what might possibly happen in the future. I just want to get through right now. I want to just accumulate as many notes as I possibly can so I can have something, something, of myself worth holding on to. What I’m doing right now, what is happening between the two of us, doesn’t matter to me, because I’m not going to remember it and it probably won’t matter in the future. But at least I will have something that can tell me who I am, what kind of person I’m trying to be, where I want to go, what I want to do. I have nothing, Jack._ **I am nothing**.

But I don’t say that. What I actually say is, “I think I got too drunk and fell down a hill.”

Everything else we say after that isn’t important. I walk out of his office.

After therapy, Jeremy piles into the car with Roger and I because he wants to see Lindsay, too.

But she’s not there. Because it’s her day off. So Roger buys us McRibs and we sit in the McDonalds, chatting idly.  **Roger** isn’t that much different from Ryan, but he has a lot of memories. He **used to be a detective,** he says. He used to save people from stalkers and solve the most gruesome murder cases.

He excuses himself to the washroom.

“Do you really think Ryan used to be a detective?” Jeremy asks.

I shake my head. “You’d know better than me,” I say. “I don’t know the guy. Hell, I barely know  _ you _ .”

Jeremy looks hurt but he doesn’t say anything and ducks his head into his sandwich. “True,” he whispers.

Roger takes us home. He takes Jeremy home first, drops him off at his little house with the white picket fence on Marinade Lane. I think Jeremy still lives with his parents.

Then Roger takes me home.

“Were you really a detective?” I ask, trying to only sound skeptical. “Like, you really saved people?”

“I did.” Roger doesn’t sound offended, so I consider myself in the clear. “I know it’s hard to believe. I’m washed up.” Oh, shit. I started something. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He monologues. It’s amazing I remember most of it.

“It’s so funny. You live your whole life one way, learning how to play the cards you’ve been dealt. You make a life for yourself, create a system that works. Then, one person, one realisation, something that has existed forever suddenly matters and the life, the system, it all comes crumbling down.” His eyes fade out. He’s staring someplace very far away, which is terrifying because he’s driving. “Everything breaks, everyone leaves. They make you sit in white walls until they figure out what’s wrong with you. Then they try to tell you that they’ll make you better, that you’ll be able to function like everyone else.” He sets his jaw and narrows his eyes. Whatever he’s seeing got closer. “There was nothing wrong with me.  **There is nothing wrong with me** . They’re just scared.”

He’s furious. It’s fucking terrifying. I go, “Oh.”

“I could’ve made it on my own just fine,” he says. “I had a life, Michael. I was someone. And they took it all away from me just because they think I’m sick. It hurts, doesn’t it?”

I hesitate, but he deserves honesty. “I wouldn’t know,” I answer.

He smiles, and I think I prefer it when he’s angry. “Of course you wouldn’t,” he says. “Do you think Jeremy does?”

“The fuck do I know about Jeremy?”

Roger straightens in his seat. That anger is gone, and now it feels like pride. “I am so good at noticing things,” he says, smug. “I can already tell you Jeremy’s unhappy. And so are you.”

“Of course I’m unhappy. I don’t know who the fuck I am most of the time. Jeremy’s unhappy, probably because he wastes most of his life doing literally nothing but staring into space. At least he’s figured out how to make good use of that time. It’s not jerking off, but it’s something.” Roger laughs and I break a smirk. “What? Fuck you. Don’t laugh at me.”

“I like you, Michael Jones,” says Roger. “Despite it all, you still got spunk.”

“It’s all I got,” I say.

He looks at me kinda funny. I look right back at him.

“Here’s your stop,” he says. He pulls up in front of the apartment building and puts the car in park.

“Thanks,” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt and gathering McDonalds leftovers and my notebook.

“Michael,” Roger begins as I put my handle on the door. I stop and offer him a neutral look. I don’t know why, but I’m scared of what he’s going to say. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

What the hell do you mean? The fuck do you mean? Of course I don’t remember. What part of amnesia do you not understand? “No,” I say, even and cold and I’m not sure how to respond to that.

Roger’s face falls. He looks out the windshield and frowns. “You never change.”

I get out of the car. I go back to my apartment. My phone jingles, a text message from that mysterious number: ‘ _ I know the truth. _ ’

‘ _ I don’t. Enlighten me. _ ’

‘ _ Meet me at the lakeside on the 14th. _ ’

‘ _ Just text me the truth. _ ’

‘ _ You will want to hear this in person. _ ’

‘ _ Don’t act like you know me. _ ’

‘ _ I know you better than anyone else. _ ’

I don’t text back. Lindsay wraps her tail around my leg and rubs against my knee and purrs. I shove my phone in my pocket and pick her up and we sit on the couch and drink and play video games.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _


	7. Historical Accuracy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder that I gave up on this story and wasn't originally going to post it.

**Untitled Entry**

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
  2. Place chicken nuggets on baking tray
  3. Wait until Preheat light turns off
  4. Put chicken nuggets in oven
  5. Bake for 7 minutes.
  6. Flip nuggets
  7. Bake for 5 minutes.
  8. Take out of oven.
  9. Turn off oven
  10. Let nuggets cool



_[a black line separates the entries]_

* * *

**Entry 015: A Question of Self  
** _July 9th, 5PM_

Burnie is the only person who has known me since before the accident. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m curious about who I used to be. Maybe it’s the book. Maybe it’s Roger. Maybe it’s both. I can record the truth and look back on it and find a way to move forward, the same way you can pick up a video game after returning to an old save several years later.

“Who was I?” I ask when we’re sitting for dinner. We just made chicken nuggets and fries for dinner. It’s not much of a dinner but it works. (I thanked him for making dinner, but it turns out I am the one who made it and I don’t remember a damn thing.)

“Almost exactly as you are now,” Burnie says.

“What? Spunky?”

Burnie laughs like he didn’t know I knew that word. “I guess,” he says. “You were also a neat freak and you could talk all day, even if you had nothing to say.”

“Sounds legit,” I say because I do definitely do a lot of talking for someone with no memories.

“And you had a short fuse.”

“Fuck you.”

“And you cursed a lot.”

“Of fucking course.”

“ **A lot of people liked you**.”

I pick at my chicken with my fingers, turning them over and over. “Where did they all go?”

Burnie smiles. It’s not sad but it’s tight. “They’re... waiting for you to come back.”

“Why haven’t they seen me? I’m still the same person, I just don’t remember anything.”

He swallows, sets his jaw. “They’re living their lives, Michael,” he says.

I don’t believe him. “And my parents? Where are they? Did I have siblings? Do you know where I was born? God, when’s my birthday?”

“Michael, calm down.”

“Calm down? I am fucking calm!” I’m not calm. “Where did everyone go? Why did they leave? Why are you the only one who stayed!?”

“It’s complicated,” he says, staring at his food.

I hate that. I hate it so much, it hurts.

But it doesn’t matter, does it? Because I’ll forget. Of course they left. Why would they need to explain themselves over and over and over again. “How many times have we had this conversation?” I ask quietly. I don’t want to know the answer.

“I lost count,” he says.

I want the answers for my book. I want to know, I want to remember.

But it seems like no one wants me to.

_[the entry is divided by several black lines]_

* * *

* * *

* * *

**Entry 016: A Plan of Good Intentions  
** _July 10, 8PM_

Gavin and I have a plan.

He comes over at 4, knock knock knock. _That’s Gavin,_ I think. _He should be here!_ He comes in and we play with Lindsay and she loves the attention. I grab us some beer, Gavin starts up the Xbox, he puts in GTA. We sit and, as we play and drink, I tell him about what Roger and Burnie told me and he nods. I even read out loud some of my entries. He listens, aimlessly driving in circles.

“Sounds pretty sketch,” he says at last, when I’m done getting everything out.

“I know. Before, I probably wouldn’t have cared.” But I hold the journal in my hands and thumb through the pages.

Gavin shrugs with one shoulder. “So, what do you think we should do?”

“We?”

“Of course!” He laughs like he’s surprised I didn’t know. “You’re my boi, Michael boi. ‘Sides, sounds like you don’t really trust anyone else?” He turns up his voice at the end, and it’s hope that makes the question.

I shake my head but I’m grinning. “Shut up. You know just as much as I do, so you’re the only person who isn’t hiding shit from me.”

Gavin squeaks a giggle. “So, what are we gonna do?”

I think about it for a moment. “We need to find out what happened,” I say. “I want to see everyone again. I’m ready for this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, I couldn’t be any more sure.”

Gavin hums, chews on that for a moment, then shrugs. “Reckon we should start with Burnie. What’d you know ‘bout him?”

I open my book and flip to what Burnie wrote about himself. It’s not much, but something sticks out. “He owns his own company,” I say, bolding out the words of a small company. “I worked for him before, so that means I had coworkers. Maybe we can go to his company and see if we can find some answers from them.”

Gavin nods. “Sounds top.” He doesn’t sound excited.

“What’s up?”

“I dunno,” he says. “They didn’t come to visit you. What if they’re… not happy to see you?”

“Burns said everyone loved me,” I scoff. “He’s the second most trustworthy guy I know.”

_[a black line separates the entries]_

_[the writing has changed, the page is crinkled in some sections]_

* * *

**Entry 017: He Lied  
** _July 11th, 3AM_

_[crinkle]_

So, GET THIS, rght??? 

They FUCKING HATE me. FUCKING. HATE. Me

Burnie LIED

_[crinkle]_ He fucken **_LIED_ **

They ddnt say nothing, didn’t fuckng tell me shit just

“OHHH, get OUT, ooooooh”

FUcken COWards _[crinkle]_

They can all go FUck themselves

I have Gavi and Roger and Jeremy and EVERYone _[crinkle]_ else can GO AWAY

_[crinkle]_ No

Never again.

_[crinkle]_

_[crinkle]_

_[crinkle]_

Burnie never said I was a good person.

_[the remainder of the page has been doodled on with sharp lines]_

_[the next entry starts on a fresh page]_


	8. All the Wrong Things

**Entry 018: Recovery  
** _ July 12th, 4PM _

I think I made myself forget.

I wake up. There’s a cat sleeping on my bed, a journal is overturned on the floor.

I don’t remember anything. I’m following the steps Jack wrote because I’m alone in my apartment, sick with a hangover.

I’m not scared. I struggle to turn YouTube on but I type in Johnny Cash and let whatever the first song is, play. The words are depressing, but it’s soothing enough, I guess. It doesn’t do anything for me. I’m not scared. Actually, I don’t feel anything at all.

I call Jack. Someone else answers the phone but they don’t question me when I ask to speak with Jack. “Hello?” he says.

“Jack?”

“Yes?”

“I forgot again.”

“Okay,” Jack says, cool. “Just stay put. I’ll be over in a bit.”

He hangs up and I pick up the journal and explore my apartment. The cat follows me around until I sit at the couch, open the journal, and read until Jack comes by. A musical knock, and I answer the door and let him in.

He pets Lindsay, picks her up, and joins me on the couch. “What happened?” he asks and I shrug.

“How the hell should I know?” I snap. I lift up the journal. “This is all I have.”

Jack sighs and sets a hand on my shoulder. “Can I read it?”

“I haven’t finished it yet,” I say, shrugging his hand off. “The first rule of the book is, don’t let anyone else read it.” A pause. “It’s actually the second rule, but that’s not important.” Jack opens his mouth to talk, but I cut him off to get him onto a different track. “I think I was drinking last night,” I blurt out. “I have a…  _ fucking _ hangover.”

He nods. “Then we should get you some water.”

He gets me a glass of water and feeds Lindsay. I’ve only gotten as far as the seventh entry, which is about Facebook --- or there lack of. I forgot I had it at all.

“Would you like to come to therapy today?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “But I’d like to finish reading first.”

“Of course,” he says. “We’ll leave in about an hour.”

It’s nice that Jack dropped everything to come see me. I consider reading it with him, because he seems so trustworthy. Maybe he can help me make sense of everything.

But I don’t. Just in case Past Michael knows something I don’t.

An hour later, we’re on our way to therapy. I haven’t gotten much farther because my mind keeps wandering. There’s a lot of information here and some of it feels contradictory. Did something happen on the third of July? Gavin sounds like a stranger, why do I keep talking to him? Something isn’t adding up and I don’t know what it is.

We arrive at therapy and he reintroduces me to Ryan and Jeremy. They’re pleasant. It’s awkward but they seem used to it. Jeremy talks about the book he’s writing. Ryan sits back, arms folded, smiling and offering his two cents where he can.

I’m reading my journal. I read about Roger. I almost like him more than Ryan. My eyes flick up to him and we accidentally make eye contact and oops, I think he knows I’m reading about him.

I look back to the book and try not to look suspicious. Wow, I hope he can’t read minds. Then I realise Jeremy’s no longer talking so I lifted my head again and notice he’s blanked out right at a wall, eyes unblinking and mouth half open. It’s kind of freaky, watching Jeremy fade out like that. Ryan shrugs. “I guess he got an idea,” he says.

I say nothing and look back at my journal.

“You look troubled,” he says softly. I don’t know what to say, so I shrug. His eyes narrow on me. “Is something wrong?”

“A lot is wrong,” I admit quietly, looking around to make sure no one is listening. “It’s… a lot to wake up to.”

Ryan unfolds his arms and sets his hands on his thighs. “You know, you shouldn’t spend your first day awake worrying about the past. No one spends their childhood worrying about what happened before they were born.”

“I feel like that’s not true.”

“Regardless,” He rolls his hand. “Point is, you should take it easy. Relax. Go out and see the world. Remember what it’s like to be alive.”

I cock an eyebrow. “And then get lost on my way home? I’ll pass.”

“Well, I could go out with you.” And then, he nodded his head to Jeremy. “I’m sure Jeremy will want to come, too.”

We talk a bit, and I forget how most of it goes, until Jack comes up and asks me and Ryan to join him in his office. He wants Jeremy, too, but he hasn’t come back so we decide to leave him there and come back later.

According to my journal, this hasn’t gone well in the past before.

We sit down in his office, and Geoff is there. “There’s something we want to try,” Jack says, diving straight into it. “You two have been on our waiting list for a while, for personal OTs, but we have noticed you two have become stagnant in your recovery. So, we would like to try a new approach.”

Stagnant? I feel like I’ve made more progress in the last two weeks than I have… ever. My heart sinks into my stomach. I grip the journal in my hands.

“What do you have in mind?” Ryan asks.

“Hypnotherapy!” Geoff exclaims, throwing his hands in the air, and Ryan and me laugh. “It’s not a joke,” he follows up with but he’s still as amused as us.

“Really?” I scoff. “You think that will help?”

“Well, yes.” Jack straightens his back. “I believe that there may be a chance we can help Michael start remembering personal information, such the name of previous pets or the street he grew up on.”

Ryan chortled. "Security questions."

I shoot for gold. “Is it possible I could remember what happened before the accident?”

There’s a tight silence, broken by Jack’s reluctant sigh. “Maybe,” he says.

“And, not to make this about me,” says Ryan. “But what about me?”

“Well,” Geoff begins. “The idea of DID is to basically merge all your personalities into one.”

Ryan flinches like he didn’t know that before. “What?”

“With hypnotherapy, we could possibly pull out different personalities, find their function, treat the underlying problem, and then…” He locks his fingers together in front of his face. “You’ll be one person.”

“I see.”

I cast an anxious glance to Ryan but he firmly ignores me. I turn my attention back to Jack and Geoff. “So, when’s this gonna happen?” I ask.

“Ideally,” says Jack. “Next session.”

“That’s fast!”

“A good friend of Geoff’s is coming in from New York to help us.”

Ryan inclines his head. “And how long will this go on for?” he asks.

“As long as it takes,” says Geoff.

Somehow, I have a feeling none of us want to know what’s going to happen. We go back out to the main room. Jeremy is still staring at the wall. Ryan isn’t interested in talking. I take the time to record what happened into my book.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 019: Trust  
** _ July 12th, 2AM _

Jeremy never comes out of his fade out, so Jack drives him home and I go with Ryan to drive around town until we find something to do. We settle on a steakhouse on the corner of Jobson and Third.

It’s a good time. We split an order of nachos, he gets a steak, I get the biggest hamburger I have ever seen.

“Look at the size of that thing!” he gasps when the waitress brings it to our table.

“Tonight!” I announce loudly, puffing out my chest. “We dine like kings!”

“Bow to us, peasants!” Ryan adds and digs into his steak.

I turn to the waitress and make a show of gently pounding my fist against the table. “This king demands another double whiskey, neat!”

The waitress giggles and says, “Right away,” and disappears.

“She hates us,” says Ryan.

“Oh, yeah, she does.”

Dinner is fun. It’s great, even. It feels like I remember how to laugh. I feel bad about Jeremy, because he’d surely love this, but there’s always next time.

I won’t remember this, I think. It doesn’t matter.

But I look up at Ryan and he smiles with a mouthful of steak and I decide I don’t care that it doesn’t matter. This is the best damn burger I have ever had.

After dinner, we’re driving in his car and he says, “We should go to the movies.” How long has it been since I’ve been to a movie?

“Sure.”

“No, I got one better,” he says. “We’ll go to a drive-in.”

And I gasp because I forgot those exist and that sounds like a great idea. The night is warm and the stars are out and it turns out the drive-in is running classic movies like Top Gun and Saving Private Ryan (which is kind of funny). He pays for us to get in and we pick a spot by the back.

We get out and watch the movies on the hood of his car. He has a speaker that attaches to the radio of his car and he puts it on the roof so we can still hear. I buy popcorn and soda and we sit and watch both movies, snipping the occasional joke.

It feels like no time passes when the screen finally dims.

The movies are over.

The cars clear out.

But me and Ryan stay on the hood of the car and turn our attention to the stars. A part of me wants to fetch my journal and write everything down. A part of me wants to stay and enjoy the moment.

Ryan almost falls asleep.

“Hey,” I begin softly and he opens his eyes with a sleepy hum. “You… don’t know anything about me from before the accident, do you?”

He shakes his head. “Not that I know,” he says which isn’t terribly reassuring.

“Good.”

There’s a pause. Then he says, “Why do you ask?” I take a deep breath. It’s cold, suddenly. I’m scared to say anything. I’m basing my trust on one remembered conversation and a recount of past lives. It sounds like this plan was supposed to be between only Gavin and me. “Michael?”

“I think I tried to go back,” I explain. “To my work.” Ryan gives me his attention. He rolls onto his side but I can’t bring myself to look at him. “The last entry before… before I woke up was talking about people…” I lick my lips. “My old coworkers hate me.”

He props himself up on his hand and furrows his eyebrows. “Why?”

“It doesn’t say.” I fold my hands on my stomach. “But I don’t think of myself as the type of person who cares about what other people think. I think it hurt because Burnie told me once that everyone liked me, but it wasn’t true. Either way, I apparently drank myself into a memory lapse.”

Ryan mumbles, “You can do that?”

“Apparently!”

He rolls back onto his back and stares up at the stars. “That is a strange thing for you to do,” he says. “But given your situation, you’re not really in a position to be giving away trust so freely.” I hum. He nudges me with his elbow. “So thanks for trusting me.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t seem to like telling people about what goes on in that book of yours,” he says. “So, by extension, you don’t really let people in that easily. Hell, every version of you has always been the same. Always secretive, hiding behind a facade of indifference. But you do care. We know you do. You say it doesn’t matter, but it does.”

No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, not to me. But I don’t say that. “I see,” is my response because I don’t think I ever really thought of it that way. Well, no, I kind of did. I mean, I wrote it in my book a thousand times before not to trust anyone but Gavin and I’m not sure where I got that from.

But I’m afraid to say that. I’m still scared of Ryan, even though he has had nothing but good things written in my book and we had a lot of fun. Why couldn’t I trust Ryan? Is it a side-effect of constant amnesia? Or am I just that devoid of basic human trust that everyone has to earn it over and over again? Am I ever-evolving or eternally stagnant?

How many more times can Ryan, Jeremy, Gavin reearn my trust before they decide it’s not worth it anymore?

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 020: All The Wrong Things  
** _ July 13th, 8PM _

I text Gavin at about noon. I just woke up, I’m still half asleep, but we should probably get together to talk about what happened at the company. My dumbass didn’t write down the name after I found it out so I guess I’ll never know the stupid company is called.

Before Gavin gets back to me, there’s a pounding on my apartment door that scares the fucking shit out of me. I put on my bravest face and open the door.

It’s Burnie.

“What the  _ fuck _ did you do?” he seethes. His face is red, he wheezes when he breathes in large, shaking breaths.

I shake my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pushes past me, storms into the apartment, and goes straight for the journal. “Don’t you fucking dare!” I leap at him, grapple him around the waist, grabbing my right arm with the left, and throw him sideways. He crashes into the TV stand and the whole thing collapses, electronics and all. As he struggles to his feet, I grab the journal and retreat to the other side of the coffee table. “What the hell is your problem?”

“Why did you go back?” Burnie demands. “Why did you go back to the company?”

“Because you were hiding something!” I scramble for a moment, trying to remember the exact details of the moment but the fearful rage makes everything foggy. “I had to know. I had to know.”

“Give me the book,” he says, outstretching his hand. “I won’t read it.”

“What are you going to do?”

**“Burn it.”**

“No!” I clutch the journal to my chest. I feel like a child. “You can’t do that! You can’t do that, man, that’s  _ fucking _ horrible and you  _ fuckin’ _ know it.”

“It’s for your own good.”

I try to laugh but it comes out more like a pissed-off scream. “My own good!? The hell do you know about my own good! You  _ lied _ to me, Burnie! You lied, you said that everyone was waiting for me to come back! You said---” I get choked up because it suddenly sounds stupid. “You said they liked me.”

“That’s what this is about?” he growls and it stings because he, too, thinks it’s stupid. “You’re worried about people  _ liking _ you? That’s not the Michael I know.”

“Fuck off about the ‘Michael you know’! No one fucking knows me, not even myself!”

“I know you well enough to know that book is only going to bring you more hell than you can handle.”

“ _ This _ !” I stab a finger against my forehead so hard, it hurts. “ _ This _ is more hell than I can handle!” Jackhammers are slamming against my head. My chest, my brain, every vital organ hurts. “This distrust, the lies, all these fucking… everything! Everything! You’re just a selfish fuck who can’t handle the truth! You lie to me and you trick me and you fucking--- fucking--- I could fucking kill you!”

There’s a bang, followed by a silence that screams. I feel nothing in my right hand, but I feel the muscles in my biceps ache. Slowly, I turn my head. My fist is two inches into drywall, my arm dusted with debris. Tenderly, I withdraw my hand from the wall. It’s pulsing. It’s going to hurt a lot.

Burnie is staring at me, his face unreadable. It’s existential fear, boiling rage, overwhelming sorrow.

“What happened before the accident?” My voice cracks as if the silence is stronger than my speech. “What did I do?”

Burnie shakes his head. He takes two steps to the door, reaches for the handle, thinks. Turns. “You don’t deserve to know,” he says.

And then he leaves.

I stand in the middle of my apartment and the air might as well have turned to tar.

Lindsay scrambles out from under the chair. She meows and looks at her empty food bowl.

I fill it before I leave for the hospital.

Gavin shows up at the hospital a few hours after I’m admitted for a broken hand, and I tell him they’re saying I am going to lose the feeling in that hand if I don’t stop punching things. I hope it heals, because writing with my left hand is a fucking pain.

“Well,” Gavin says. “That could’ve gone better.”

“No shit.”

“So, what’re we gonna do?”

He sits down next to me in the cubicle. I’m just waiting for test results from the x-ray. I’ll be released soon enough. I lean back against the bed. “Were you with me when I went to the company?”

“Yeah,” he says. He leans his elbows onto his knees and folds his hands. “It was, uh… It was rough.”

“What did they say?”

Gavin purses his lips together. He shakes his head. “They said to get out and not to come back. You said somethin’ ‘bout Burnie and I guess that’s how he found out. Those guys were right pissed at him, too.”

I’m staring at the ceiling. “I didn’t… I didn’t cost him his employees, did I?”

He reaches up and runs a finger across his eyebrow. He hesitates and that tells me more than what he says; “I don’t know.”

“Did I destroy his company?”

“I don’t know.”

“What---”

“Michael,” Gavin leans up, dropping his head back but still looking at me. “Little Michael Boi,” he sings. “Don’t get too into your head about it. That won’t help us much.”

I sigh. “I guess you’re right,” I say. “For once.”

He presses a hand against his chest and mocks as if he’s been stabbed. “Michael! Ouch!”

I stick my tongue out at him and the doctor walks in. She stops, cocking an eyebrow at me, and I slid my tongue back in. I giggle a bit, but she isn’t amused because she’s got a stick up her---

“Well, your hand is definitely broken.”

“Happens,” I say.

“How did you break it?”

“Fell down a hill. Into a river.”

She eyes me, then flips up a page on her clipboard, then eyes me again. “That’s how you broke your hand the first time,” she says.

“Ah.” That is dragged out longer than it needs to be. “Fuckin’, hills and rivers, am I right?”

“You're a poor liar, Mr. Jones.”

“I’m a lot of things,” I respond. “Can I go?”

She waves her hand. “We’ll send you the bill.”

And Gavin and me leave.

“So they didn’t mention a thing about what happened before the accident?” I continue once we’re outside. I have already put my address into the GPS and we’re mindlessly following it.

Gavin frowns and shakes his head. “It happened pretty quickly. It was your… bender that ended up takin’ most of the night.”

“Right.” I drank myself stupid to forget everything --- and it worked. “You drank with me?”

“Was with you right ‘till you passed out.”

“Of course,” I chuckle. Something pings at the back of my mind, but I ignore it in favour of more important things. “There’s something I wanted to ask you about, if you’re interested in still helping me… do whatever it is I’m doing.”

Gavin skips on the spot and smiles. “Of course, Michael boi!”

“Shut up,” I snort and I pull up the mysterious text messages. “Someone knows everything about me and they’re texting me.” I hold my phone out for him and he reaches for it --- and I pull it back. “No way, fucker, you’re not dropping my phone again.”

He scoffs but doesn’t protest, leaning forward and squinting to read the words as we walk. “Oh. Creepy.”

“Right?”

“Are you gonna go?”

“Huh?”

“You’re supposed to meet him tomorrow night.”

That’s right. I hesitate and flip back over the GPS. “I dunno,” I admit. “It’s kinda sketchy. Maybe I should bring someone with me.”

Gavin whistles. “Maybe not a good idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who can you trust?”

I lift the book into the air. “Ryan slash Roger, probably. Jeremy?” Gavin eyes me dubiously. “What’s that look about?”

“Ryan admitted to you last night that what happened on July 3rd was not what happened on July 3rd.”

Classic Gavin, making no sense. “Huh?”

“Ryan and Jeremy lied to you!”

I flip through my book and he’s right. I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stare. This book is all I have. It’s all I have. Past Michael is telling me the truth, but that doesn’t mean the truth is real. “Can’t you come with me?”

“Can’t. Going for London tonight,” he says.

I jolt. “London!” I gesture widely and damn near hit someone in the face with my journal. “You can’t leave for London! I need you!” And that comes out before I really think about it. 

Gavin makes a face that makes my heart hurt. “Well, I only came to America for a bit,” he says slowly. “Like, you’re great and all…”

And then I realise that Gavin isn’t as close to me as I think. He didn’t know about my amnesia, he didn’t know a lot about what’s happening. “Oh,” I finally say. “I guess you told me before.” Gavin nods. He keeps distance between us. It doesn’t make any sense. “You said you’d help me.”

“While I was here,” he clarifies, the fine print at the bottom of our friendship. Fuck you, is all that’s really going through my head. “But, we still have time. We can get some work done.”

“Sure,” I say, retreating into my journal. A part of me can’t wait until I forget about all of this again. But I stare at my journal and I stare and I stare and I’m not reading and I’m only thinking and my heart is breaking but I’m still here. “You know what? If it’s your last day in America, we should have fun.” I shove the book into my coat and nudge his shoulder. “We’ll make it a day you’ll never forget.”

Gavin, despite himself, looks bashful. “What? Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I say. “If it’s the last time I ever see you, I want it to be good.”

So, we’re going out on the town. We’re gonna have bevs, we’re gonna have burritos, and we’re gonna have fun.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Untitled Entry**

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.

You gave me something so wonderful to remember you by. I wish I could give you something to remember me by, too. Something you can look back on and think to yourself, “Ah, yes, Gavin, that son of a bitch. He came into my life and meant so much.”

But that’s not what’s going to happen.

Like everyone else, I lied to you, too, but at least I will come clean. Maybe it’s at the worst possible time, maybe it’s too late, but it’s the truth.

**Don’t go to the lakeside tomorrow. The person who has been texting you will kill you.**

I care about you, Michael, and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. I’m sorry I’m leaving, but life goes on, even when you don’t remember most of it.

I’m sorry, I really am.

Your Boi, Gavvy

_ [a black line separates the entries] _


	9. A Very Long Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know I've been hypnotized before? It was actually really fun!

**Entry 021: Ryan, Roger, and Edgar  
** _ July 14th, 3:30 PM _

When I get to therapy the next day, I’m shaking and pale and I’m hungover and I’m sick and it’s Roger I’m greeted by. “You look like hell,” he says when I walk in and take my seat next to him.

Gavin’s goodbye note has me shaken. I wish he was around still so I could ask for more details, but maybe that’s the point. I can’t look up from the floor, my left-hand grips my cast. “Uh, went out for a bender with my friend. Goodbye party. He’s leaving for England today.”

“Huh,” says Roger. “I wasn’t aware you had other friends.” I’m in way too much pain to figure out the tone of his voice so I just nod and yawn and stretch. He gives me a funny look and I ignore him. “You ready for the hypnotherapy thing?”

“Oh, shit.” I rub my eyes. “Fuck, do we gotta do that  _ today _ ?”

“Jack’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I wave my hand and drop my hand from my eyes. Then I notice, something’s off. “Where’s Jeremy?”

Roger shrugs. “Couldn’t tell ya.”

I hum and let the answer fall like a leaf to the ground. In my haze, I find some residual courage. Maybe courage isn’t the right word. “Do you really have DID?” I ask, pinching my eyebrows at him.

“What?”

“You and Ryan almost act exactly the same.”

Roger places a hand on his chest. “I will have you know, I am far more honest than Ryan.”

That’s interesting. “Is that so?”

“Uh huh.”

“And if I ask you things, you’ll answer me honestly?”

Roger nods, smug. “Best I can.”

So I grab his forearm and grip as tight as I can with my left hand, which isn’t as much as I want. He recoils, more out of confusion than shock or pain. “What happened on July third?”

He pales, swallows, opens his mouth. “MIchael? Are you okay?”

“Give me the fucking answer, Roger,” I spit. Because what else have I got to lose anymore? “What’s everyone hiding from me? What happened to me? What did I do? Tell me, Roger.” I can’t breathe, I can’t see straight, I swallow.

At first, I think he’s going to put his other hand on mine, but he thinks twice and instead puts it next to it. “Hey. It’s okay. Take a deep breath. What’s going on? Talk to me.” I can’t, so I let go of his arm and throw my journal at him. He barely catches it, fumbling, but it never hits the ground. He stares at me wide-eyed, keeping his cool. “Are you sure?”

“Just the last entry,” I say. “The last one I wrote. Nothing else.”

He takes a moment then nods and opens the journal, flipping through the pages until he gets to the last one. He’s tempted to read anything else, but he doesn’t and stops at the 20th entry. His eyes flick up to me and I hope he reads it before I change my mind. “Your handwriting is atrocious,” he says. I don’t say anything, so he just reads.

He’s been reading for about a minute when Jack walks out of his office to get us. He narrows his eyes at Roger, then at me, and I shrink back. Which entry was about the conversation I had with Jack regarding the book? I wonder how long ago that was. “Roger, Michael,” he says, gesturing us to join him.

Roger doesn’t look up from the book, but he stands and walks without looking. I trail behind him to make sure he doesn’t walk into anything.

When we get into Jack’s office, Roger hands me back my book and offers me a sympathetic look. I don’t think he read the whole thing but I think he read the important part.

In the office, Geoff and Jack stand to one wall. In the middle of the space, a man sits next to a chair with a blanket folded over it. He has some kind of speaker set up, a microphone, a set of headphones, and a computer. Somehow, this is not what I pictured when Jack said hypnosis.

“Where’s the swirling pendulum?” Roger jokes, so at least I’m not alone there.

“I would like you guys to meet Joel,” Geoff says, gesturing to the man in the seat.

Joel waves a little. “Hello!” Roger and I exchange an uncertain glance but we say nothing and look back. “I am your hypnotherapist, Joel, and I will be guiding you through a meditative experience tailored to your specific stuff.”

I snort. Stuff. That’s a nice way to put it.

Roger gestures to everything. “So, what’s all this?”

“My equipment!” He gestures to the headphones. “I will be playing a soundtrack that will help block out all the noises and get you relaxed. I will also be talking into the microphone so you can hear me walk you through the steps.”

Roger taps a finger against his chin. “It sounds like we’ll be doing most of the heavy lifting,” he says and it surprises me that he got that from whatever Joel was saying.

“Emotionally, yes,” says Joel. “Hypnosis is driven by you and your mind.”

I smirk. “So, I’m not going to get up and cluck like a chicken?”

“Not unless you want to,” says Joel and everyone shares a laugh.

Geoff claps his hands together. “So! Which one of you two knuckleheads wanna go first?”

I look at Roger and he looks at me, and then he shrugs. “I guess that’s me,” he decides.

They get him settled into the chair, lean him back all the way so he’s laying down. Jack puts a blanket on him, Joel gives him headphones, and Roger lays perfectly still beneath the blankets. He shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath, and visibly relaxes. Geoff stands next to me. I think I’m more nervous than Ryan is, and it’s obvious on my face.

“Do you feel comfortable with the people in this room?” Joel asks into the mic. Roger nods. “They are your friends.” Roger nods, even though it wasn’t a question. “Remember, as long as we are here, you will be safe. You are safe, here in Jack’s office. You are not going anywhere. You are right here.”

Geoff mouths something to Joel, like, ‘Can he hear us?’ and Joel’s hand gesture says, ‘A little, so keep it down.’ He hits a button on the computer. Nothing happens but Roger cocks an eyebrow. Must be the sounds in the headphones. Then, Joel pulls up a small stack of papers stapled together and he reads aloud into the microphone. Geoff turns to me. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“I noticed you’ve been spending a lot of time with Ryan,” he says. “I’m just curious how that’s going.”

“Fine,” I answer. “He’s pretty cool. I know Ryan and Roger have different memories and stuff, but they pretty much act like the same person, don’t you think?”

“Years of therapy and a million other things,” Geoff says. “He’s really come a long way.”

Years of therapy. That sticks out to me. I fold my arms as best I can with a journal and a broken hand. “I’ve only ever met Ryan and Roger. Are there others?”

Geoff shakes his head. “It’s not my place to talk about it.”

“That’s fine,” I say and now I feel kind of bad for not asking Ryan myself. But I add, “Just wondering why you’re worried about me hanging out with Ryan but not Jeremy. By the way,” I say it quickly so Geoff can’t make up an excuse. “Where is Jeremy?”

“He didn’t feel up to coming in,” Geoff says. “He’s at home.”

I tilt my head one way. “That sucks. I was kind of hoping Jeremy would be here for my hypnosis.”

Geoff shrugs but Jack is staring me down. Joel is walking Roger down some convoluted path, speaking softly and clearly. Roger isn’t saying anything. He just nods and shakes his head whenever he’s asked a question.

A pang of anxiety strikes my chest, so I open my journal and stick my face into it. I’m not reading the words. I’m listening to what Joel says.

For about half an hour, it feels like nothing is happening. Roger is still in his chair, Joel is still talking, and then Joel says, “Now, you walk through a door and you’re someplace you feel powerful and safe. What is it?”

“Stage,” Roger mumbles.

I snap my head up at the sound of his voice. For the first time, Roger is speaking.

Joel goes, “What kind of stage?”

“Theatre.”

“A theatre stage. What does it look like? Can you describe it?”

“The lights… are bright,” he says. “It’s huge. It’s… Broadway.”

“Broadway,” Joel says. “What makes it feel safe?”

“It’s warm, an’ familiar,” he explains. He doesn’t talk like he’s explaining it to Joel but to himself, as if he’s spitballing ideas of safety. “I don’t hafta make… decisions. Just… lines. I know the… motions. Success. I can see every’un… An’ they see me.”

“Anything else?”

“They see me,” he says again. “But they don’t.”

I’m shocked Joel doesn’t press for Roger to explain. “Is there anyone sitting in the audience?”

“Yes.”

“How many people?”

“Maybe…” I can see his eyes looking back and forth behind his eyelids as if he is really counting the people in the audience. “Maybe ten people.”

“Who are those people?” Roger doesn’t say anything. Joel tries again. “Who’s in the audience?”

Roger mumbles something, but before Joel can ask him again, he answers; “Me.”

“Are they all you?”

“Yes. Er, no. ...Most.”

“Who are the other people in the audience?”

Roger hums, and then he says, “Michael.” I nearly drop my book at the sound of my name, but I just catch it and close it and grip it tightly and I stop hiding that I’ve been paying attention. “Jeremy. An’... Someone I don’t know.”

“The person you don’t know, what do they look like? How do you feel about them?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t see them. They are sitting… in the back. Lights… blind.” He takes a deep breath and shifts ever so gently but I don’t see any fear.

“Everyone else,” continues Joel. “Where are they sitting?”

“At the front.”

“Are they watching you?”

“Uh huh.”

“And why are they watching you?”

Roger hums. “‘Cause I’m… performing.”

“Performing what?”

“Shakespeare.”

“You’re a man of taste.”

“I know.” Roger sounds so Goddamn smug, I grin and it takes all I have not to laugh.

“The other yous, the ones in the audience, what are they doing?”

“Waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“For their turn.”

Jack gasps as if he’s been prodded with a taser. Joel shoots him a look and Jack covers his mouth, slinking back. “They’re waiting for their turn on the stage?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you think you could give one of the other yous in the audience a shot on stage?”

“Nah.”

“No? Why not?”

“It’s my turn.”

“Why is it your turn?”

Roger shakes his head. “No one else wants to do this.”

Oh. A thousand theories sing in my head, but the one that sticks out the most is that  **Roger is the Ryan who does the hard stuff** . Ah, that must be why I like him so much. I’m trying so hard not to smile.

“You have the choice to trade places with another you,” Joel continues. “You have control of the stage. Would you like to trade places with someone in the audience?”

“Nah,” Roger repeats.

“Why not?”

“They don’t want to. Ry…” His own name is caught on his lips, halfway out his teeth. “We… don’t want to… They don’t…” He murmurs, struggling to say anything in its whole. I’m frozen, I couldn’t move if I wanted to. I’m afraid if I step in any direction, I’d break the spell and Roger would wake up.

“Can I talk to Ryan?” Joel asks.

Roger hums. He’s chewing on something, probably the inside of his cheeks. “Okay,” he says at last.

“Go sit down, Roger,” says Joel. “Rest a bit. Ryan will talk for now.” There’s a long silence, as if we’re really waiting for Roger to sit down and Ryan to stand up. “Hello?”

“I hate this,” says Ryan.

“It’s okay, we’re just here to help you.”

“I know.”

“Do you know who is in the room here with you?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Broadway.”

“Do you know where your body is?”

“No.”

Jack nods thoughtfully. I finally find the courage to take the weight off one foot and onto another. I kind of wish we had seats. “That’s okay. You are in Jack’s office. You are with friends. You don’t have to worry.”

“Oh,” says Ryan. He has yet to give any response as detailed as Roger’s.

“How are you feeling, Ryan?” Joel asks.

“Fine.”

“Is there anything you want to tell or ask us?”

Ryan hesitates. “No?”

“Okay, that’s fine.” He shifts. “Now, you are under hypnosis, just so you’re aware.”

“Oh, God.”

I have to put a hand against my mouth and squeeze my eyes shut to keep from laughing, grinning into the palm of my hand.

There’s an amused edge to Joel’s voice as he continues. “Ryan, I would like you to find another you that you trust and bring them up onto stage with you.”

“Huh?”

“Roger. Bring Roger onto the stage with you.”

“He just sat down.”

“And he can stand back up,” Joel counters. “Please bring Roger onto the stage with you.” Ryan grumbles but doesn’t do much else. “Is Roger on the stage with you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Hello, Roger.”

“Hi.”

“Roger and Ryan.”

“Uh huh.”

The air changes and it might as well be ice; cold, tense, and still. Joel continues, even and honest. “I hear you two have a lot in common.”

“Uh huh.”

“What do you have in common?”

There’s a painful silence. Ryan’s eyes aren’t moving and his breathing changes and I’m scared being afraid will make things worse so I just grip my journal and try not to think too much about what might happen. Finally, he speaks so slowly, like he'd trying to read someone's mind. “We want to help people.”

“You want to help people?”

“Uh huh.”

“How do you want to do that?”

Ryan makes a sounds that means, ‘I dunno’.

“Okay. Anything else you have in common?”

Another silence, and then; “We have the same friends.”

And I’m reminded of what Roger said, about him not being aware I had any other friends and I realise Ryan must have other friends, too, and I don’t know if I want to meet them or not.

“Who are they?” Joel presses.

“Jeremy an’... Michael.”

“Do you know Michael is in the room with you right now?”

Ryan makes a strange sound that’s caught between yes and no and it looks like it hurts to make that noise. “Hi, Michael,” he says meekly.

Joel gestures for me to come over and say hi, but I shake my head. So Joel says, “He says hi back.” and leaves it at that. “Okay, now,” He shifts and I realise he’s about to do something. “I want you to say what you have in common, but instead of we, can you say I?”

“Huh?”

“Instead of, ‘Michael is our friend’, can you say, ‘Michael is  _ my _ friend’?”

Ryan sighs like he’s a child told to do chores. “Michael’s my friend,” he says.

“And can you say, My name is Ryan.”

“My name’s Ryan.” Agitation etches his eyebrows like he’s concentrating really hard.

“Yes and---”

“Ugh.” Ryan shifts. Geoff hasn’t moved in fifteen minutes. Everyone is still. I have the urge to speak but I have no words to say. “I hate this,” he says again.

“What’s happening?” Joel asks, as if Ryan is a crying child and not possibly on the verge of a psychotic breakdown.

“He wants to talk.”

“Who?”

“Edgar.”

Geoff and Jack react, shaking their heads violently. Joel doesn’t look panicked as much as confused, torn between doing his job and following their orders. They don’t have any time to make a decision: Ryan does it for them.

_ Edgar _ does it for them.

“This is stupid.” His voice hasn’t changed but his attitude has. He doesn’t look focused; he looks angry. I’ve never seen Ryan angry before and I suddenly wish I never had. “This is ridiculous.”

“Hello, Edgar,” Joel tries. To his credit, he’s completely calm and indifferent, unlike the rest of us. “How are you doing?”

“Fuckin’ pissed off,” he says. He isn’t mumbling like Ryan and Roger. He’s coherent. I’m almost convinced he’s no longer in hypnosis.

“Understandable.”

“Is it?”

“Of course.” Joel isn’t talking the same either. He’s still honest, but he is giving Edgar a different kind of respect from Ryan and Roger. An equal, rather than a teacher. “Are you annoyed because we are messing with your brain?”

Apparently, that’s exactly so because Edgar purses his lips and frowns. “If you think you fuckwads can  _ fix _ me,” he snaps. “You’re dead wrong.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t need to be fixed.”

That pings something in the back of my head. I’ve been ignoring it until now, all the times something pings, but I have the time now and maybe it’s important… I open the journal and thumb through the pages, stopping in all the places that mentioned Ryan. What entry was it? What’s that stupid ping? It feels important, but I can’t place why.

“What do you mean?” Joel asks.

“I don’t  _ need _ to be  _ fixed _ .  _ That’s _ what I mean. There is  _ nothing _ to fix.”

Fucking dammit. Why the hell is that so familiar? There are no words or sentences or images or anything. Just a really, really,  _ really _ bad feeling. Geoff leans close. “Michael?” But I ignore him.

“Are you… aware of what problems your current condition causes?”

That’s the wrong word. Problems. That’s a bad word.

“Fuck you,” says Edgar. “I’m not a fucking problem. The problem here is you fucks keep trying to change me. There’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing!”

It’s not yelling, but the word is stressed like it is. His voice cracks. His eyes flutter. For half a second, I’m certain he’ll wake up.

But he doesn’t.

“It’s not you who’s the problem.” Joel is trying to save it but it’s too late.

Entry 14. It’s a long one.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Edgar snaps. “Is it one of the  _ other _ personalities that’s the problem? Smith? Albus? Do you want me to list them and you can tell me which ones need the axe?”

Joel sighs. “Edgar, I---”

“How about I kill all of them? It’ll just be me and then I can go free and live my life. Is that what you want? Is it?”

Oh. I keep the page open. It takes everything I have to cross to Joel and gesture for him to give me the microphone. He shakes his head; I nod mine, and it’s takes Edgar going, “I’ll fucking do it.” for Joel to give up the microphone.

He moves so I can sit. I place my cast on the book to keep it open. The microphone is in my left hand. “Ed-Edgar,” I begin. My voice shakes and cracks like a straw shed in an earthquake. “It’s Michael.”

“Who?”

“Don’t worry about it. I just… want to talk.” He tilts his head back like he’s trying to look down his nose at me and it’s ridiculous. But he doesn’t protest, so I continue. “If you could get, like, Ryan and Roger up there with you and… Smith, or whoever.” Joel shakes his head violently but I ignore him.

“Why should I?”

“Because I think it’s important you all hear what I have to say.” I flick up to Jack, who stands disapproving and, next to him, Geoff is hopeful. Joel just looks pissed I took his job.

“What are you going to tell them?”

“I’m going to tell you,” I begin slowly. “Something I should have said a long time ago.”

There’s a pause. Edgar shuffles. I’m not sure how this is going to work. For a second, I think he’s going to get up and strangle me. Instead, he says, “Okay.”

I take a deep, shaking breath. I’m sure he hears it, “I… I want to say… You’re right.” I stare at Ryan’s face. I don’t want to see what everyone behind me is doing, I just want to focus on him. “There is nothing wrong with you. Any of you. All of you are… are just fine.” Ryan’s eyebrow twitches and I hurry along. “But everything else. All the other, uh, parts of… being separated. Forgetting things. Not knowing where you were last night. Not knowing what you said or did to anyone, and whether or not you meant it... Doesn’t it bother you?”

Ryan’s quiet. I realise I just asked all the Ryan’s that question and they may not all have the same answer. I add on quickly, “Don’t answer that,” and he relaxes. “I just… You don’t have to change. This isn’t about changing who you are. It’s about breaking free of the things that limit you. It’s about safety and security. It’s about knowing what’s going on and remembering what happened and meaning exactly what you say when you say it. It’s about control. Having control over you and your life.” I shake my head. “Do you know what I would give for that?”

Silence. I swallow, lips my lips, try to talk, I hope he says something to cut me off, but he doesn’t. So I look down and realise I’m closer to the verge of tears than I want. “Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say.” I almost stand, then, “Oh, one more thing.” Ryan stiffens. “Don’t… Don’t lie to me about who you are, like which personality I’m talking to, or whatever. I, uh, I... Yeah. Uh, see ya.”

I hold the microphone out to Joel. Ryan doesn’t say anything, Joel doesn’t say anything, I cross back to the door with my journal in my hand. “So, who am I speaking with now?” Joel asks.

I leave before there’s an answer. I shut the door behind me and back away from it like it will swallow me whole. I see shadows moving in the frosted window and I know it’s Jack coming back for me. I just keep walking backwards until the door opens, and I freeze. He looks at me, shuts his eyes, and sighs. “That was very brave of you,” he says. “But pick a better time to do that, next time.”

I shake my head. “There was no better time. I needed him --- all of him, to hear that.”

For half a second, I expect Jack to argue with me, but he doesn’t. “You’re staying for your therapy, right?”

“I think I’ve had enough therapy for today.” I look up at the clock. It’s almost three. “Besides. I have some things I need to get done before, uh… Before tonight.”

“Tonight,” Jack asks. “What’s tonight?”

I scramble, then shrug and say, “Meeting with a friend.” I smile at him tight, offer a small wave. “Bye, Jack.”

And I take off.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 022: Last Meal  
** _ July 14th, 8PM _

I book an uber and read my journal in the backseat. I reread the part with Roger --- or, more I suspect, the part with Edgar, I think --- and a name catches my attention; Lindsay. I pause, mull it over for a moment, then glance up at the driver. “Hey. I changed my mind. Can you take me to the McDonalds on Shepherd and Locke?”

The uber driver’s pissy but he gets over himself and takes us there. I pay him cash for the extra distance and get out.

McDonalds is empty. There’s only a woman who’s mopping behind the counter. The door dings when I enter and she looks up and we look at each other and…

It’s Lindsay. She’s beautiful.

And I know it for only one reason; she doesn’t greet me. She just stops and stares, like a cat who realised she’d been seen. I stop at the door and we stare at each other for a very long time. “H-Hey,” I finally manage.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, gripping the mop like it’s a weapon.

I nod and keep my distance. “Yeah. I get that a lot.” She doesn’t immediately shoo me away, so I stay and keep talking. “Listen,” I say. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know if you know that. But Jeremy said I should talk to you.” Wait, that’s weird. I flip open the book. It’s the last thing Jeremy wrote in my book. I shut the book. “Yup. Got it right here.” I wave the book in the air.

“What is that?” she asks.

“Memory journal,” I answer. “I have both kinds of amnesia, so it’s kind of hard to keep track of my… everything.” She’s relaxed a bit. She doesn’t seem like she’s ready to defend herself anymore, anyway. I swallow and take a deep breath. “Do you… Did you know me before the accident?”

“Accident?” she asks. “What accident?”

“The one… where I lost my memory the first time.”

Lindsay slowly shakes her head. “Michael,” she says. “There was no accident.”

I bite my lip. Of course that was a lie, too. “Then how did I lose my memory?” She looks over her shoulder and I think she makes eye contact with someone I can’t see and mouths something. I try again, quickly. “How did I lose my memory?”

She turns back to me and shakes her head. “I can’t tell you, Michael, and it’s not because I don’t want to.” She sets the mop against the counter and puts her hands down. I walk forward, ever careful, and stop a few paces from the counter. “We’ve tried to tell you before, but you never seem to understand. Eventually, it became easier just to… lie to you. We made a beautiful lie for you to live in, because the truth…” She shakes her head. “If I could make everything right again, I would. But I can’t. It can’t be fixed.”

I take a deep breath. “It’s something I did, right?” I ask. “I did something and… It destroyed everything.” She closed her eyes and nodded. Gently, I place the journal on the counter and she eyes it. “I just… I want to know something.”

“Go ahead.”

“There’s a man you work with. He’s… blond, blue eyes, er… Might talk like a douchebag.”

The question throws her off. “I think I know who you’re talking about.”

“What’s his name?”

“Roger.”

I nod. “That’s what I thought. Thank you.”

Lindsay leans forward. “Is that all you came here for? To ask me about Roger?”

“No,” I say. “I had a lot of questions, but… I think they were answered the moment I saw you.”

She exhales half a laugh like a sigh of relief and I smile. “Come now, that’s not like you.”

“Well, I find that I have been very myself lately and I think it’s time for a change of pace, if what I’m lead to believe is so bad.”

“Michael, you are not a bad person,” she says. “You’ve just done bad things.”

“Bad things I can’t remember.”

She gives me the courtesy of a nod. “Please don’t go chasing ghosts, Michael. Nothing good will come of it.”

I hesitate, I consider. “Can I ask you something first? Before I make any promises?”

She snorts. “I think  _ this _ is the question I’ve been expecting this whole time.”

“Me and you were… a thing, weren’t we?” I ask. “Before everything went wrong.”

Lindsay gets kind of distant for a moment, her smile falters, then changes and the humour leaves and it’s replaced with nostalgia. “Yup,” she says.

“We’re not anymore, are we?”

She shakes her head.

“If I… fix things. If I make it right,” I take a deep breath. “Can we try again?”

Lindsay laughs. I hate sugar, but her laugh is my favourite sweet thing I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. “Oh, Michael, I don’t know,” she says and finally, finally,  _ finally _ , someone is honest.

“It’s okay,” I say, and soften. “That’s honestly the best answer I’ve gotten from anyone.” Her coworker emerges from the back and hands Lindsay a bag, which she hands to me. I peek inside. McRibs. Like, five of them. “Holy shit.”

“Come back,” she says. “Whenever you get things… sorted out.”

I nod, I gather the bag and my journal and take a deep breath. “Listen,” I say. “Whatever it is I did, I’m sorry.”

She smiles again, this time with a sorrow as heavy as the sky. “Oh, Michael,” she says. “I know.”

_ [a black line separates the entries] _


	10. All That Matters Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, the last chapter of Before I Forget.
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this story, and thank you for all your kind words! I hope you all have enjoyed the story thus far and thank you so much for your support! So, without further ado, the final chapter.
> 
> *~&&&~*
> 
> PLEASE NOTE TAG UPDATE TO INCLUDE SUICIDE TW  
> WARNING: TW: SUICIDE

**Entry 023: On the Lakeside  
** _ July 14th, 1 AM _

I go home first, only to be reminded that my house is a mess and my gaming system and my TV are smashed to shit from when I threw Burnie into it. Lindsay, the cat, makes it to my side and never leaves, purring and meowing and digging her fucking claws into my leg. We sit in the living room for a while, her on my lap, and I'm petting her absently, watching the seconds go by.

This is the only thing that matters now.

I take an uber to the Lakeside because I can’t remember where it’s at and I don’t think I can bus there. It’s dark, approaching midnight. The guy drops me off, asks no questions, and leaves.

It’s warm tonight, but it's overcast. No stars or moon to watch me now. There is someone standing on the bridge, shadowed by the light of iron lampposts and the fire inside them. I don’t have to make myself walk. In fact, I’m almost eager to get there.

The bridge swells over a rushing river. He leans against the railing, watching the river run in the dead of night. If he hears me approaching, he doesn’t turn. I stop a few paces behind him and my stomach turns to lead. “Gavin?”

He doesn’t acknowledge me, so I find my place next to him and mirror his body language. It’s colder by the lake. “You came anyway,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“You know you’re going to die.”

“Yeah.”

“Does the truth really mean that much to you?”

He hasn’t taken his eyes off the horizon and I’m looking anywhere but. “I wouldn’t really say I’m… alive,” I answer. No more lies. “I think the truth is all I really have anymore. And, if I’m honest, I don’t really think I care what it is. I just want to get this over with.”

Gavin finally moves. He pivots his body to face me, leaning his elbow on the railing. “So you’ve said your goodbyes?”

“As many as I could on short notice.”

“Really. You’re not going to fight me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” I take a deep breath and ignore the growing acid in my throat. “I guess it depends on the truth.”

Gavin laughs, but it’s humourless. He looks back out onto the river. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.

“Guess it doesn’t,” he agrees. “Then, I guess we’ll start with the most recent lie and work backwards. Sound good?”

No, I’d prefer to start with how all this started and make the dots connect from there, but the way he talks, I doubt I have a choice. “Fine.”

“Right. So, let’s start with… Well, Lindsay told you the truth through and through.” He puts his forearms on the railing. “Good on her. Really.” I agree. “One more back. Let’s talk about Ryan, Roger, and Edgar. Do you think, at any given time, Ryan was really who he said he was?”

“I’m not sure,” I answer. “I think there was one time I thought I was talking to Roger but it was actually Edgar. Or, maybe, it’s the other way around.” I make a pained noise and rub my forehead. “It’s a little hard for me to understand.”

“Do you think Ryan ever had DID?”

“Yes,” I say. “That was definitely not him in that chair. It was someone else. And Roger, well… Him and Ryan are similar, but I think it’s on purpose and I think that’s what he meant by not needing to be fixed. He figured it out himself, how to quell the other voices and rely on Roger to get him through tough moments. He said his safe place was the stage, so maybe it’s less like another personality and more like a persona. It’s hard to say.”

Gavin nods. “DID is a tricky one,” he says. "But it's never as dangerous as everyone's lead to believe."

“Yeah.”

“Do you think Roger was really a detective?”

I scoff. “I honestly don’t care.”

“Right.” Gavin sounds disappointed but he doesn’t press. “Let’s talk about Jeremy, shall we?”

“I thought we were going backwards.”

“I’m confusing myself.”

“Of course you are.”

“Jeremy,” Gavin says, “is definitely honest. In fact, I think he’s only ever lied to you once, putting him second in the Truth-Teller category after Lindsay.”

“Shout out,” I say.

“This should be an easy one to figure out, but he lied about the Third of July.”

“When are we gonna talk about the Third of July?”

“Hold on, I’m getting there.” Gavin gestures to my journal. “According to your book, how many times have you and Jeremy talked?”

That’s a tough one. I flip through my book. It takes a few minutes for me to get an answer. “Maybe, three, four times. I dunno if some of them count, though.”

“I’ll let you decide,” he says. “Because…” His voice trails off. He shakes his head, he laughs a bit. “Oh, Michael, the mess you’ve made. Now, I’ll tell you what happened on July Third.”

“Fucking finally.”

“They said you got drunk and fell down a hill. That’s not all a lie.” He puts his finger against his chin. “You get drunk. You start a fight with Jeremy. You claim you will kill him.” My heart sinks. “You attack him. Before it gets out of hand, Ryan steps in and throws you down the hill to save Jeremy. You break your hand in the process, fall in the lake, and forget everything.”

I straighten my back and put my hands on the railing. “Holy shit,” I whisper. But I can’t doubt him. I have flashbacks to my fist in the drywall. A gear clicks into place. “Oh, no.”

“Right, and then,” he continues. “Ryan and Jeremy realise what’s happened, right? So,” He laughs. “You wanna know something really funny? They almost don’t pull you out of the lake. Spoiler alert, they do and they drag your sopping wet ass to hospital.”

I’m gripping the bars with my hands. “I tried to kill Jeremy,” I whisper.

“You also tried to kill Burns, too, but at least you didn’t go through with it. ‘Cause, you know, you were sober.”

It hits me like a freight train. “It’s the alcohol,” I whisper.

“It’s the alcohol,” says Gavin.

“Then--- Then that’s the secret,” I begin, every muscle shaking, my vocal cords a mess of trembling agony. “If I don’t drink, then I won’t forget.”

Gavin shakes his head. “Oh, Michael boi, it’s not that easy.” That pings something in my head but I’m too shocked to acknowledge it. “There is still the big question, innit? The one you’ve been scrambling to answer since you started that book.” He gestures to the journal. “What started all this?” He looks at me, tilts his head. “What do  _ you _ think happened?”

I’m at a loss. I don’t know. I can’t fathom any basic concept. I list a bunch of horrible things someone could do, like kick a child or hurt Lindsay, but none of them seem right.

I meet Gavin’s eyes and he stares back, waiting, patient, unlike I’ve ever known him. “I killed someone,” I say. “Didn’t I?”

He smiles and it reaches his eyes. He looks back out to the lake. “Who did you kill, Michael boi?” he asks. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. It couldn’t possibly fucking be---

“You.”

It doesn’t hurt. Facing the truth doesn’t hurt. Not yet, anyway, it will, but not right yet. Instead, all the feeling in my chest, the razors in my stomach, the blood in my lungs, it all goes away. I am completely numb. “You,” I say again. “I _killed_ you.”

Gavin breathes like an age-old pain had been lifted off his chest and he remembers what it’s like to breathe a lungful of clean air. “Good work,” he says.

“Why?” My voice cracks, I sound like I’m trying to talk with rust in my throat. “Why did I do it?”

“Well,” he says. “You get drunk, innit?” Of course. Of course I did. “And then… You get angry. You get angry and then you decide that you hate me and you want to kill me. So you do.”

“Why?”

“It’s a trivial reason,” he says. “It's a joke taken the wrong way. A bad joke towards Lindsay. She laughed. You didn’t.”

“I… killed you in front of Lindsay?”

“In front of everyone.”

The numbness is becoming apparent. It’s prickles and stabs of needles into my fingers, up into my hands, my wrists, my arms, my chest. “H-How? Was it… an accident?”

“It was no accident, Michael boi,” he says.

I pause, swallowing, watching the reflections of the lampposts in the lake. “I’m not at… I’m not in therapy for amnesia, am I?” He shakes his head. “It’s the anger, isn’t it?” He nods. “That’s what… When did it…” I cover my mouth with my hand, shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and keep going. “When did it get so bad?”

“You know, I don’t remember,” he says.

“If you’re dead --- like, if the real Gavin is dead --- who are you?”

Gavin looks at me. “Well, I’m you, innit?” he says. “I’m not real. You made me up. It’s always been like this, you know. I’ve haunted you through every lifetime, through every drinking binge, every relapse, every panic, every realisation, everything that made your life hell.”

The pain settles in like tar. It’s filling my stomach. I don’t know when it’ll stop. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“No, no, Michael,  _ I’m _ not doing anything. It’s all you.”

“Why am I…?”

He reaches out, touches my shoulder, but his hand feels like the wind. “Because, Michael,” he says. “No one will ever forgive you. Not even you.”

A ring starts to tighten around my head. The tar has filled my stomach and moved into my lungs. “What’s going to happen now?” I ask.

“Well,” he says. “You’ll forget, won’t you?” He lets go of my shoulder. He grips the bar of the bridge. “Like you always do. You’re a coward, Michael Jones, and you always will be.” He hoists himself up onto the bar and stands on it unlike the real Gavin ever could. “Will you come with me?”

“Huh?”

“If you’re just going to forget again, could you at least stay with me until you do?” His face softens. He almost looks sad, maybe scared. It’s hard to place, but it’s a genuine emotion. “I hate it when this happens, it always hurts,” he says. “It would be easier to do this together, don’t you think?”

It isn’t a hard decision to make, I don’t think. The tar has filled my lungs and it’s in my heart and it struggles to beat. It’s hard to breathe. The stickiness in my stomach is beginning to burn and every inch of me knows that it is going to hurt, and it will hurt a lot. 

“If you do this,” he continues. “I’ll forgive you.”

I hoist myself up onto the rail. I manage to make my balance. Gavin takes my hand but all it does is warm the prickling of my palm. I look at him but he doesn’t look back. There’s nothing left to say, I decide. I look out over the lake and take in a last sight.

It’s dark. It’s all dark. Below me is a light, the broken reflection of the lamppost fire. “Don’t look down,” Gavin says. “It’s much better if you look up.”

I look up at the darkness. I swallow. The silence of the night is almost overwhelming. It’s peaceful, I decide. The tar fills my heart but doesn’t burn. It doesn’t hurt, like the way it stops hurting when you’re about to finally drown.

I take a deep breath. Everything suddenly feels so small and so distant and everything I did suddenly doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. It never did, did it? I wrote it a thousand times, over and over and over in this journal. Nothing really matters. Nothing matters.

Nothing matters.

When I shut my eyes and think of only the lake and the ghost standing at my side, I could probably fly if I tried. There is only this moment, the way it always should have been.

“I’m sorry, Gavin.”

“I know.”

He jumps.

I follow.

An arm wraps around my waist and yanks me backward, and I hit the bridge with a resounding thud. I can’t find it in me to say anything, but every part of my body is both cold and hot and the tar is burning and everything hits me like I’ve been assaulted by a bunch of people with bats and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

I don’t remember much of what happens after that. Just vague images, gasping for air until there's a burning in my chest, clinging onto someone definitely bigger than me. “Don’t forget,” he says. It’s most definitely Ryan’s voice. “Please don’t forget. Hold on to that memory. I know it hurts, but hold on. It will be okay. I promise. I promise.”

He expects me to cry, but I just sit on the bridge, half-aware of how the world is turning and the fire is burning in the iron lampposts and the lake rushes below.

I don’t know how long we’re sitting on the bridge, clinging to each other like children in the midst of war, but Ryan never gives up. He never let's go.

My memory kind of blanks afterward. The next thing I know, I’m in his car. We aren’t driving anywhere, just sitting in the parking lot and in silence. I wonder who I’m sitting next to. “Ryan?” I try, and it’s barely louder than the ringing.

“Roger,” he corrects.

“Oh.”

I fall into silence. I swallow loud. I lean my head back against the passenger seat. He places a pen on my journal. “You should write all this down before you forget,” he says.

And I do.

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 024: For The First Time  
** _ July… whatever, 4AM _

When I finish my entry, I read it out to Roger. He’s silent the entire time. Saying everything out loud, I feel like I’m living it all over again, and there are some sentences that are hard to read --- either because I’m having trouble seeing through tears in the dark, or my handwriting is illegible, or it’s just hard to say. It takes me a while, but I get through it.

At the end, Roger takes a deep breath and says nothing. So I speak first. “How did you know?” I ask.

Roger chortles humourlessly and points to his head. “I’m a detective,” he says. “I see things that everyone else might otherwise miss. I know what to look for when someone is, er… ready to die.” I open my mouth to protest, but then again, all of yesterday was spent saying goodbye and tying up all the ends I could before I went to the bridge. “Jack saw it, too,” he continues. “We were so worried. We looked everywhere for you.”

“You looked for me?”

“Yes. All of us. Even Jeremy.”

“I tried to kill Jeremy.”

“I know.”

“Ryan stopped me.”

“Yup.”

I grip the journal in my hands and shake my head. “Why don’t you hate me? Just because I forgot? That doesn’t change the things I did. I’m a bad person.”

Roger takes a deep, deep breath. “We’re all people who have done bad things, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people,” he says. “None of us are free from guilt. Do you think they’d admit you to a normal group therapy if you were prone to murderous rage?”

I accidentally click my tongue, mostly because I… I don’t know. There’s a pause, the briefest moment before I shiver from a freezing cold realization. Anxiety punches me in the chest. I try to be careful with my words, unsure how to ask, but it comes out quiet and shocked, like, “ _ You _ murdered someone?”

"Yes,” Roger clarifies. “It was an accident, but someone died all the less. That's how... _this_ happened.” He gestures to his face and it takes a second for it to click he means his DID.

“Oh,” I say. It startles me. I’m not sure what to say, so I fall back on humour. “We’re all criminally insane. Holy shit, we could go to Arkham.” Roger laughs. “We should be in straight jackets and padded walls. How are we still walking free? We all should be in jail.”

“We were.”

And then, I realise, I never asked how long I’ve been going to therapy. I never asked how long everything had taken. I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how many years I’ve spent reliving the same agony over and over and over again. My voice cracks when I talk. “How long…?”

“Years.”

“How many?”

He shuffles, he takes a deep breath. “Nine.”

Time freezes. Dread. Long, painful, existential dread. Nine years. Nine years. “How…?”

“You went to prison for manslaughter,” he explains. “For five years.”

“My God.”

“And then spent two going between therapies until you landed at AHGT about two years ago.”

“When did I forget?”

Roger shrugs. “I’m not sure of the details,” he says. “I didn’t want to pry so I didn’t, but if I’m correct, I think you’ve had these amnesia things since you killed your friend. I think when you realised what you did, it drove you mad and the easiest way to deal with everything was to just… forget.”

I take a small breath, the memory of a phrase I never chalked up to more than just impulsive self-destruction. “I made myself forget,” I say. Roger nods. “So everyone at AHGT is a criminal.” He nods again. “Even Jeremy?”

“Yup.”

“Damn.”

“I know.”

I laugh with a sense of irony. “I didn’t even know he had it in him.” Roger hums but says nothing and we fall into a silence I’m desperate to fill. “Well, this has been… enlightening.”

Roger turns to me and rests an arm on his steering wheel. He kind of winces when he does that. “I wanted to thank you.”

“What?”

“For what you said back at the, uh, hypnosis thing.” I almost forgot about that. “Do you really think… er...”

“Rog,” I say. “I meant every word. I mean, sure, Edgar’s a dick, but so am I, so like…” I over gesture a shrug for comedic effect.

Roger laughs. “Point taken.”

“Is Edgar the reason you stayed?” I ask. “Did you stay because you saw him in me and you thought if you could help me, you could help Edgar?”

A pause, as if Roger never considered that before. “No,” he finally says. “I stayed because I liked you. Not everything I do is for a complicated, underlying reason.”

“Oh.” Well. I wasn’t expecting that answer. “You just stayed because you liked me? I tried to kill Jeremy!”

“Uh, huh. And you would’a done it if Ryan wasn’t there.”

“Roger!”

He puts up his hands. “I’m just being honest!” He puts his hands back down. “Listen, Michael, I know that all of this is news to you, but it’s not to us. We’re willing to support you and help you get better. You’ve made more progress in the last two weeks than you have in nine years, and I’m not about to leave you now.”

I scoff but smile anyway. “How did you ever put up with me?”

“It wasn’t hard, Michael. You never change, no matter how  _ we _ changed. You were always feisty and distrusting and funny and distant. You were always the same person. You were always the constant,  _ my _ constant, even if you felt things were ever-changing. So, the only thing I could do back was to always be the same, as best I could, despite my… stuff.”

It’s sweet and it’s kind of anxiety-inducing but… I run my fingers over the journal. “Who’s idea was the book?”

“Yours, actually.”

“Huh.” I take a deep breath. “So.” I’m not sure I want to know, but I ask anyway; “How many times have we had this conversation? The one where you tell me I’ve been to prison and that everyone’s a criminal and I completely wasted nine years of my life?”

Roger smiles. “Like this?" he asks. "Never.”

_ [a black line separates the entries] _

* * *

**Entry 025: Once More, With Feeling  
** _ July 15th, 12 PM _

Ryan takes me back to AHGT the next day to finish the session with Joel. Jack and Geoff and Jeremy and everyone else is shocked to see me when I walk in that door. Jeremy hugs me, I tell him to fuck off and he laughs at me.

I’m sitting in our corner with Ryan and Jeremy. Joel is getting the stage set for my hypnotherapy. With Ryan’s help, I explain to Jack and Geoff what happened and promise them they can read my book after I’m done writing this entry.

The truth is, I’m kind of scared. If this works, who knows who I’ll become. They all seem pretty confident that I’ll still be the same person, but I’m afraid that I won’t.

Anyways, I guess I only have one last chance as this person, assuming the hypnotherapy works. It didn’t work for Ryan on the first try, but it’s possible they’re able to fix me making new memories and then we can work from there.

But this is far from over.

“This is gonna suck,” I confide in Jeremy at the start of first recess. “What if I forget again?”

“The thing is,” Jeremy says through a mouthful of cookie. “You’ve already proven you're strong enough to handle it. I mean, even if you forget, you have your book, written in your words, and maybe it’ll help that the person who’s telling you the truth is you.”

“That’s,” I begin, letting it hang in there air for a moment, running my fingers down the twenty-third entry. “A good point.”

“I think that book is you deciding, on some subconscious level, that you’re ready.”

Because after the amnesia, there’s still the anger and the pain and apparently I’ve been hallucinating my dead best friend, which was suspected but never confirmed until now. So, I have a long way to go, but at least I’m going forward. After nine years, I’m finally moving forward.

Ryan asks me as Joel comes out to beckon me in, “You said in your book that nothing matters, but you still do everything anyway. Why?”

“Well,” I tell him. “Nothing matters to me, but it matters to you, and you matter to me, so… I guess it  _ does _ matter to me?” Ryan laughs, I shrug.

“Did it matter at the time?” he asks.

“I dunno,” I answer. “But it matters now, so, I guess that’s all that… matters. Finally, after nine pointless years.”

“They weren’t pointless,” he says. “Nothing about those years were pointless. It may have taken you a long time to recover but every second lead up to this moment. This is you now.”

“This is me,” I echo, and I’m not sure why. I stand, clutch the journal in my hands, and regard Jeremy and Ryan, because it’s not goodbye even though it feels like that’s what I should be doing. Because I don’t know what else to do. Because I’m scared that this may be the last chance I have to say it, because I don’t know who I’ll become when I walk out that door again. The obvious answer is that I will just be the same me who woke up every reset.

Or maybe I’ll become the man who murdered Gavin with the capabilities to do it again. If this works, I’ll become a murderer. I’ll have to live with the rest of my life, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.

But I guess that’s the point of all this. To  _ become _ ready for it, to deal with it, and then...

Well, I don’t know, but I guess I’ll find out.

_ [there are no more entries] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that concludes Before I Forget! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you wanna chat, you can find me over at http://www.whitakerwrites.tumblr.com/ on Tumblr.
> 
> Thank you again, and enjoy your night!

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: https://whitakerwrites.tumblr.com/


End file.
